iPhone users should be aware of a new problem that can cause their devices to crash. Using four specific characters on your iPhone’s keyboard is enough to trigger a crash, thanks to a recent iOS bug.
According to a Mastodon security researcher, entering the sequence “”:: in Spotlight Search or App Library can crash your iPhone. TechCrunch reported that even typing the three characters “”: followed by any random fourth character could cause the crash.
9to5Mac claims that when their team typed these characters on an iPhone running iOS 17, the iPhone Home Screen crashed and “soft rebooted”. Does this happen?
iOS bugs of this nature have appeared several times in the past. These issues are usually addressed quickly by Apple. There has been no statement from Apple regarding this particular crash. Yet, such bugs are usually quickly resolved by the company.
In our test, we did not encounter any problems, but that isn’t true for everyone. As a result, it’s best to avoid typing these characters. It is unlikely that most users will frequently enter these four characters.
