Apple’s fourth beta of iOS 8.4, seeded to developers and public beta testers on Tuesday, contains a fix for the messaging bug that causes an iOS device to crash after receiving a message with a specific string of Unicode characters via iMessage or SMS.
Sending the string of characters to an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch results in an immediate respring, causing the device to crash and quickly reboot. From there, if the Messages app was opened at a list view, the Messages app crashes automatically when you try to open it. If it was opened to the conversation where you received the message, the app will open, but attempting to go to another conversation causes Messages to crash.
The bug, which is tied to the way banner notifications process Unicode, also affects third-party messaging apps, including Twitter, Snapchat, and WhatsApp.
While Apple recently published a support document containing a temporary workaround for the issue, users will be glad to know a fix should be on the way with the June 30 public release of iOS 8.4.
