iOS 13 notification 'text bomb' crashes iPhone, iPad

A new so-called "text bomb," a string of characters that could crash iOS devices if received in a notification, has surfaced online.

Messaging bugs like these show up every now and then. Typically, they're messages of specific characters that can crash an iOS or iPadOS device when received, forcing a device restart.

This specific "text bomb" appears to consist of the Italian flag emoji and a specific Sindhi language character, and impacts all current versions of iOS and iPadOS 13. Reports indicate that the bug only causes crashes if it appears in an incoming notification.

According to information on Reddit, this specific malformed message first started making the rounds on Telegram, but it has also appeared on Twitter. It isn't clear which specific messaging apps the bug impacts, though the fact that it only crashes an iOS device when appearing in a notification suggests that it could be app-agnostic.

Notification-based "text bombs" can be particularly annoying, as they can cause iOS or iPadOS to get stuck in a "re-spring" loop.

A similar bug involving a character in the Telugu language caused a stir back in 2018 when it circulated around the internet.

As with the Telugu bug, it's likely that Apple will issue a fix in an upcoming version of iOS. In the meantime, users who are particularly worried about their devices crashing may want to disable notifications for messaging apps until the problem is resolved. Disabling message previews in notifications may also mitigate impact.

22 Comments

Rayz2016 6957 comments · 8 Years

About 4 years ago

This happened once before. They fix it. And it happens again with a different set of characters?
Someone’s code needs to be pulled out and rewritten from scratch.

dewme 5737 comments · 10 Years

This bug should have been caught at the Unit Test level with automated Fuzz Testing.

The testing required to catch these kinds of bugs lends itself extremely well to test automation.

Embarrassing, but it still happens. Should never happen again.

dysamoria 3430 comments · 12 Years

Rayz2016 said:

This happened once before. They fix it. And it happens again with a different set of characters?
Someone’s code needs to be pulled out and rewritten from scratch.

Agreed. What the hell is going on in the text system that characters can crash it? And it’s only an iOS thing?? It’s not a mature and robust set of API elements. But then I knew that already, because of how text fields behave in Safari on iOS (abysmally & inconsistently!).

I still don’t understand HOW this is even possible to BE a bug. Can someone give a technical explanation?

lkrupp 10521 comments · 19 Years

Rayz2016 said:

This happened once before. They fix it. And it happens again with a different set of characters?
Someone’s code needs to be pulled out and rewritten from scratch.

And the new code would still have bugs. Software engineers and coders don't have the time or inclination to spend hundreds of hours trying random, different key combinations to find one that exposes a bug. That’s for the wack jobs who sit around all day, every day, in their parent's basements, fiddling around.

lkrupp said:

Rayz2016 said:

This happened once before. They fix it. And it happens again with a different set of characters?
Someone’s code needs to be pulled out and rewritten from scratch.

And the new code would still have bugs. Software engineers and coders don't have the time or inclination to spend hundreds of hours trying random, different key combinations to find one that exposes a bug. That’s for the wack jobs who sit around all day, every day, in their parent's basements, fiddling around.

... which is exactly why test automation is routinely used to uncover this sort of defect. Test scripts and computers have nothing better to do and work for nothing more than a little bit of electricity.