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If You Type These 4 Characters Into Your iPhone, It Could Crash

We tried to summon this iOS bug on two different iPhones and got varying results.

 & Emily Forlini Senior Reporter

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A certain set of characters could crash your iPhone, according a security researcher who first identified the bug on Mastodon.

Although it seems to be harmless, we can't be sure, so try it at your own risk. Swipe left past all home screen pages until you get to App Library. Then, search for "":: (two quotation marks followed by two colons).

When I tested it on an iPhone 13 with iOS 17.5.1, the screen immediately went black. It lingered there with a loading icon for a few seconds and then rebooted to a locked home screen. Other Mastodon users identified additional character combinations that seem to produce the same effect. Apparently, "A":B and A "":: also work.

Not all iPhones may respond the same way. When one PCMag staffer tested it on an iPhone 11 Pro with iOS 17.6.1, the phone did not crash. However, it did close the Settings app when entered into search, which is another place the bug has reportedly shown up.

A new set of crash-inducing characters seems to surface every few years. In 2015, it was a string of symbols and Arabic characters. In 2018, an Indian Telugu syllable caused apps to freeze and shut down, prompting Apple to fix it. In 2020, a set of characters written in the Sindhi language combined with the emoji for the Italian flag caused a crash.

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Emily Forlini

Emily Forlini

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