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The strangest bug in years is causing the Messages app to crash on iOS 18

By Alan Friedman

Published: Sep 18, 2024, 6:54 PM

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The strangest bug in years is causing the Messages app to crash on iOS 18

There's a wild and strange bug that is causing the iOS Messages app to crash on iOS 18, and it involves sharing watch faces with fellow Apple Watch users. To avoid the bug, do not send a threaded response if someone sends you an image of their Apple Watch watch face. Some Apple Watch users do this to show what complications or colors they are using for their watch faces. When you receive an iMessage of a watch face from a friend, you can add it to the watch faces saved on your Watch app.

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But right now, when you respond to an iMessage showing a watch face with a threaded response, your Messaging app and the app of the sender can both get this bug causing the app to crash. A threaded response is how you respond to an earlier conversation and keep the response inline. For example, let's say you talk often with an iPhone owner with an Apple Watch. Two weeks ago, this person sent you via iMessage an image of the watch face he uses for his Apple Watch. Because this hasn't been the latest conversation you've had with him on the app, responding to his watch face image now might result in the response getting easily overlooked since the iMessage you're responding to is weeks old.

Do not send a threaded response to an iMessage sharing the image of an Apple Watch watch face

So if you long press on the text bubble from two weeks ago containing the image of the watch face and tapping "Reply" on the popup screen, you can send a threaded response that will go to the bottom of the page with the thread's first text. However, the original comment won't appear like a new text bubble (it will look smaller with an arrow pointing to your response) so that the person sending the watch face image understands that you are responding to an older message,

Example of a threaded response. Using this feature to reply to a iMessage of a watch face can cause the iMessage app to crash. | Image credit-PhoneArena

The problem is that if you respond to an iMessage with a shared watch face on iOS 18 with a threaded response, the Messages app will crash for both parties. To reiterate, responding to the iMessage of the watch face with a threaded response while on iOS 18 results in the app crashing for both parties. However, if the threaded response is made on iOS 18.1, the app will not crash. If your iPhone is running the iOS 18.1 beta, you don't have to worry about this bug.

If you see an iMessage like this and you're using iOS 18, do not respond with a threaded response. | Image credit-9ti5Mac

Once the bug starts crashing the Messages app of both parties, the conversation history cannot be accessed until the conversation thread with the watch face is deleted from both devices. But thanks to the bug, this is pretty hard to do when the app keeps crashing. So the best way to stop this bug is for both affected iPhone users to remove all conversation history on their Messages app. Unfortunately this might include photos and videos that both users haven't saved outside of the Messages app. These pictures and videos are likely gone forever if you do this.

Is there something that Apple can do about this bug?

While you can restore deleted threads it won't help you with your problem because it will bring back the bug that caused the app to crash. With Apple Watch users now receiving the new watchOS 11 faces, you might get some iMessages from friends and pals showing off the new look faces they are using on their timepieces.

Apple will have to patch this bug in a future version of iOS. For now, if you see an iMessage showing a watch face and your iPhone is running iOS 18, just delete the message without responding to it. You can explain why you did this is a separate message.

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Alan, an ardent smartphone enthusiast and a veteran writer at PhoneArena since 2009, has witnessed and chronicled the transformative years of mobile technology. Owning iconic phones from the original iPhone to the iPhone 15 Pro Max, he has seen smartphones evolve into a global phenomenon. Beyond smartphones, Alan has covered the emergence of tablets, smartwatches, and smart speakers.