phone character entry problem crashes search, but it’s not a poor bug

A small bug affects iOS search
A bug recently discovered in iOS and iPadOS causes brief and mostly unimportant crashes when a specific sequence of characters are typed into search fields. A security researcher reported on August 21, 2024 that typing “”:: in the Search bar of the Settings app, or the App library search bar at the home screen, would cause Apple’s mobile interface, Springboard to crash momentarily. The device reloads rapidly, returning the user back to the lockscreen. In our testing, we found that typing these characters caused a crash. This meant that Settings closed and Spotlight returned back to the Home Screen. There are mixed results. We tested it on iPhones and iPads running iOS 18.1 developer beta as well as iOS 17.6.1. Some people reported that only Settings and Spotlight crashed while others reported that the App Library was also affected. There doesn’t seem to be a commonality in what crashes on which device and which operating system. Security researcher Konstantin shared the news first via X. This bug is not currently fixable, but it is not a major issue. To avoid the problem, users can avoid typing these characters in the search bar within the Settings app on their iPhones and iPads. Apple will fix the bug in a future software update now that it has gained attention.