iOS 18 Messages App Bug: What You Need to Know

Apple rolled out iOS 18 on Monday, and within two days, a serious bug has surfaced. The bug is related 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 via iMessage. If you are using iOS 18 and receive such a message, you need to be very careful. The main thing is not to reply to the message that contains the shared watch face. If you do, the Messages app will start crashing every time you try to open that chat.

This bug isn’t just for you. If you trigger it by replying to the watch face message, the person who sent you the watch face will also encounter the same issue. Both parties will find that their Messages app crashes repeatedly, making it difficult to access chats. Worse yet, it could prevent you from talking to other people via Messages, as the app will keep crashing.

Temporary solution

Currently, there is no official solution from Apple. The only workaround available is to try to delete the entire conversation in which the watch face was shared. Unfortunately, this task is quite difficult, as the Messages app may crash repeatedly, making the deletion process difficult. Even if you manage to delete the thread, you will permanently lose the entire conversation, as well as any photos, videos, or other attachments that have not been backed up or saved to another location.

It is important to note that if you delete the conversation and try to restore it from the Recently Deleted folder, the issue will persist. Therefore, this is not an effective solution. Apple will likely fix this bug in an upcoming patch, most likely with the iOS 18.0.1 update. In the meantime, users are strongly encouraged to refrain from replying to any messages containing shared watch faces to avoid encountering this issue. This is a significant issue that may create considerable disruption, so a quick fix from Apple is highly anticipated. Stay tuned for further updates!