iOS 17 Search String Crash
There is a new character bug that can result in a respring on the iPhone or iPad, reports TechCrunch. Typing
""::in the search field after swiping over to the App Library will cause the Springboard to reset, dropping you back at the iPhone’s Lock Screen.[…]
Typing the same characters into the Settings app search interface will cause the Settings app to crash, but putting it in a Spotlight search doesn't seem to impact anything.
This one doesn’t even require Unicode.
“”:XwhereXis any additional character will trigger it.
Previously:
- Google Docs “And” Loop
- Malformed iMessage Could Cause iPhone Boot Loop
- “Black Dot” Unicode Bug
- Big List of Naughty Strings
- Another iOS Crash Caused By Sending Unicode Character
- Using Siri to Work Around iMessage Crash
- CoreText Bug Allows Specific String to Crash Apps
- Data Detectors Crash in Cocoa Text Views
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This being labelled as a "character bug" is off to me since it's billed as in the same vein as combining characters causing odd, overflowing or out-of-range behavior in layout or font shaping code. This looks and feels like a tokenizer/parser bug, with the common denominators being "triggered by text entry of some kind" and "terribly drastic outcome".
Interestingly, on iOS 18, the search now happens in a new Spotlight process, instead of in Springboard, so it no longer crashes the whole UI, it just crashes the Spotlight process. Progress :-)
