As noted by TechCrunch citing security researchers, typing just four characters in Spotlight search or the app library can cause your iPhone to crash severely.
This means the combination «»: (and any fourth character). The researchers emphasize that this is «not a security issue» and «there is no evidence that anyone other than the iPhone owner can cause the error when entering characters».
9to5Mac journalists tested the code entry on several iPhones and several versions of iOS. In iOS 17, for example, entering these characters caused Springboard — the iPhone home screen interface — to crash and «soft» to reboot. In iOS 18 and iOS 18.1, Spotlight searches briefly froze, while Springboard could not fully complete its work.
This isn’t the first time the text string bug has affected iPhones — one of the most notable is called «Effective Power» in 2015 caused the «Messages» app to crash and reboot the iPhone when a certain message was received.
Apple has not yet commented on the researchers’ report, but the company usually fixes such failures quickly enough through iOS updates.
Spelling error report
The following text will be sent to our editors: