Apple's iOS 18 Messages App Bug Crash and Data Loss, How to Avoid and Fix
TapTechNews September 19th news, the tech media 9to5Mac published a blog post yesterday (September 18th), reporting that there is a BUG in the Messages app in Apple's iOS 18 system, which will cause the app to crash, and the current fix method will lead to data loss.
How to avoid the Message crash BUG on iOS 18
Reader Alex was the first to discover the loophole, and the media then successfully reproduced the loophole.
The reproduction operation steps are relatively simple. After someone shares a watch face with you from the Apple Watch, do not reply to the message in the threaded mode.
BUG situation
The Apple Watch includes a feature that allows users to easily share watch faces directly through watchOS in Messages or Mail. This feature is designed to share personalized watch face configurations.
If a user directly replies to a message in the conversation interface, it will trigger the BUG, which will cause the Message app to crash repeatedly.
TapTechNews quoted media reports that the BUG will affect both users. iOS 18 users sharing the watch face will trigger the BUG, and in addition, iOS 18.1 sending a shared watch face will not trigger the BUG.
In addition, on the receiving side, including the iOS 18.1 beta version, the iPadOS 18.1 beta version, and the macOS 15.1 beta version, when users reply to the shared watch face in the conversation mode, the Messages app will all crash.
Fix requires clearing chat records
Once an iOS 18 user encounters this problem, both parties cannot open the conversation in the Messages app. The current solution is to delete the conversation record. But due to the fact that the Messages app is in a cyclic crash state, this operation process is also rather difficult.
This solution results in the deletion of all conversation history records, including photos and videos and other attachments that have not been saved outside the Messages app.
Restoring a deleted conversation thread from the Recently Deleted location in the Messages app reintroduces the crash error. Apple may need to fix this error in the iOS 18, macOS 15, watchOS 11, and future pre-release software beta updates.
