iOS 18: Messages app can become unusable due to strange constellation | Message

Bugs have already come to light in the past that caused the Messages app to crash, for example due to certain Unicode characters. A new bug now seems to have crept into iOS 18 that means the Messages app can no longer be used – but this is either intentional or a major coincidence.

Dial sent causes problems
Probably hardly any user is aware that you can make Apple Watch faces available to other users via email and messages. As a reader of 9to5Mac discovered, there seems to be a bug in iOS 18.0: If a user sends a watch face to another user and responds to the watch face post using the reply function (a simple follow-up message is not enough, only the reply function is faulty here), the Messages app constantly crashes – and can subsequently no longer be used. The crash then affects all participants in the conversation.

Only way: delete conversation
If this situation occurs and the messaging app keeps crashing, the only thing that helps is deleting the conversation. But you have to be very quick to do this, because there is only a small window of time in which you can delete the conversation before the messaging app crashes again.

Fix likely with iOS 18.0.1
It is assumed that Apple will resolve this issue with iOS 18.0.1 – because it is conceivable that this crash could be an opportunity for hackers to cause damage via the Messages app. Since Apple withdrew iPadOS 18.0 for iPads with M4 chips on Tuesday evening, it is assumed that iOS 18.0.1 and iPadOS 18.0.1 will be released soon. This error is currently reproducible in both iOS 18.0 and the fourth pre-release version of iOS 18.1. iOS 17.7 and iPadOS 17.7 are not affected by this bug – it is also a problem introduced with iOS 18.0.