Typing these characters will cause your iPhone to crash

A new bug will cause your iPhone or iPad to restart (not to be confused with Rumspringa), security researcher Konstantin reports. If you type “”:: into the search box after swiping into your app library, it will reset your device’s Springboard, taking you back to your device’s lock screen. Since the restart doesn’t do a full reset, it only takes a few seconds to get your iPhone back on track.

You can also type the same characters into the Settings app’s search box to crash it, although typing them into the Spotlight search box doesn’t seem to cause any issues. While the respring effect only seems to occur on iOS 17/iPadOS 17 devices, typing the characters into the search box on an iOS 18 beta device exhibits slightly odd behavior, with the characters disappearing and crashing the Settings app.

The problem seems to be with the first three characters in the string, since typing just “”: and any other character will also spawn.

Of course, the best way to avoid respring is to not type a string of characters at all, so this is less of a concern than the character bugs that have spread in the past via the Messages app, which allowed users to freeze other users’ iPhones. This bug doesn’t appear to affect devices via Messages or other texting apps. The user has to manually type the characters into the search box.

It is safe to assume that Apple will address this issue soon by releasing an update to iOS and iPadOS.