A new character bug will result in your iPhone or iPad respringing (not to be confused with Rumspringa), reports Security researcher Konstantin. If you type “”:: in the search field after swiping over to the App Library it will cause your device’s Springboard to reset, which will take you back to your device’s Lock Screen. Since a respring doesn’t perform a full reset, it only takes a few seconds to allow you to use your iPhone again.
You can also type the same characters into the Settings app search field to crash it, although entering it into the Spotlight search field doesn’t appear to cause any issues. While the respring effect seems to occur only on devices running iOS 17/iPadOS 17, typing the characters into a search field on a device running the iOS 18 beta does show a bit of odd behavior, with characters disappearing and crashing the Settings app.
The issue seems to be related to the first three characters in the string, as typing in just “”: and any other character will also cause the respring to happen.
Of course, the best way to avoid a respring is to not enter the character string, so this is a more insignificant matter than the character bugs in the past that were spread through the Messages app, which allowed users to crash other users’ iPhones. This bug doesn’t appear to affect a device via Messages or other texting apps. The user needs to manually type the characters into a search field.
It’s a safe bet that we’ll soon see Apple address the issue via an iOS and iPadOS update.