A recently discovered bug in iOS and iPadOS has been causing brief and mostly inconsequential crashes when a sequence of characters is typed into specific search fields.
A small bug is affecting iOS search
On August 21, 2024, a security researcher reported that typing the characters "":: into the Search bar within the Settings app or the App Library search bar on the home screen would cause the Apple mobile interface, Springboard, to momentarily crash. The device then reloads quickly, returning the user to the lock screen.
Our testing of the bug revealed that typing these characters did indeed cause a quick crash, meaning Settings closed and Spotlight returned to the Home Screen. However, there are mixed results.
We tried it on an iPhone and iPad running the latest iOS 18.1 developer beta and one running iOS 17.6.1. Some people said that only Settings and Spotlight crashed, while others found that it also crashed the App Library. There does not appear to be commonality between what crashes, on which device, running which operating system.
Security researcher Konstantin first shared the news via X.
There's currently no fix for this bug, but it's worth noting that it's not a significant issue. Users can avoid typing these characters into the search bars within the Settings app or the App Library on their iPhones or iPads to escape the problem.
Now that the bug is getting attention, Apple will fix it in some upcoming software update.