Apple rolled out iOS 18 on Monday, and within two days, a serious bug has come to light. The bug is tied to the Messages app and can be triggered in a very specific way. The bug occurs when someone sends you a watch face from their Apple Watch through iMessage. If you are using iOS 18 and receive such a message, you need to be very careful. The key is to not reply to the message that contains the shared watch face. If you do, the Messages app will start to crash every time you try to open that chat.
This bug doesn’t only affect you. If you trigger it by replying to the watch face message, the person who sent you the watch face will also experience the same issue. Both parties will find that their Messages app crashes repeatedly, making it difficult to access any chats. Worse, this could prevent you from talking with other people via Messages, as the app will keep crashing.
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Temporary Fix
Currently, there is no official solution from Apple. The only workaround available is to attempt deleting the entire conversation where the watch face was shared. Unfortunately, this is quite challenging, as the Messages app is likely to crash repeatedly, making it difficult to complete the deletion process. Even if you manage to delete the thread, you will permanently lose the entire conversation, along with any photos, videos, or other attachments that haven’t been backed up or saved in an alternate location.
It is important to note that if you delete the conversation and attempt to restore it from the recently deleted folder, the issue will persist. Therefore, this is not an effective solution. Apple will likely address this bug in an upcoming patch, most probably with the iOS 18.0.1 update. Meanwhile, users are strongly encouraged to refrain from replying to any messages containing shared watch faces to avoid encountering this problem. This is a significant issue that can create considerable disruptions, so a timely fix from Apple is highly anticipated. Stay informed for further updates!
