iPhone owners who have installed Apple’s new iOS 18 software update should be warned: There is a bug in Messages that can cause crashes and may even lead to the loss of valuable data.
One of 9to5Mac’s readers spotted and reported the bug, which the site (after successfully reproducing it) then covered in a news article on Wednesday. The issue is related to a feature on the Apple Watch that allows users to share their watch face via Messages (or Mail).
“The bug is triggered,” 9to5Mac writes, “when someone replies to a shared dial in a Messages thread in iOS 18… If this happens, Messages will repeatedly crash if the user tries to open the conversation in the app. Sending or replying to conversations from other chats directly in Messages is also not easily possible as the app can repeatedly crash.”
This is also a two-way problem. The bug affects both users.
As 9to5Mac explains, fixing the bug is extremely tricky. All you have to do is delete the conversation thread on both devices. Unfortunately, there is no way to delete it. only thread, as neither user will be able to open it due to the bug. Even deleting the entire conversation will be difficult as Messages continues to crash and successfully performing this fix will result in losing years of conversation history and attachments. It might be best to leave the bug in place for now and hope that a future software patch will fix it without losing an entire Messages conversation.
And of course, it’s much better to avoid the bug in the first place and do not respond to watch faces in a thread. And also install iOS 18 updates in a timely manner. The iOS 18.1 beta is still affected by this issue, but reportedly in less specific scenarios than iOS 18.0. And we assume that a future update will arrive before this date to deploy a fix.
