A bug in iPhone’s iOS18 may force us to delete our conversations

Published on September 23, 2024 Vincent Paquette

A bug has been identified in the iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 operating systems. It occurs in the Messages app on iPhone and iPad. It can force us to delete an entire conversation with a loved one. Fortunately, it is easy to avoid triggering it.

An iOS 18 bug may force us to delete our conversations. – photo-credit">francoischarron.com with Dall-E.

Launched on September 16, 2024, the iOS 18 and iPadOs 18 updates bring their share of new features to our iPhones and iPads.

However, as with any new version of an operating system, there may be bugs…

Some are annoying, but harmless and do not cause major consequences.

Others, however, can be quite significant, such as a bug in the Messaging app.

Fortunately, the bug is easily avoidable and would have only been triggered by a small pool of iPhone, iPad and… Apple Watch users!

Force delete your conversations to fix the app: Messages

The bug in question specifically affects people who own an Apple Watch as well as an iPhone or iPad.

In fact, the bug is triggered if we share an Apple Watch face with one of our loved ones via the Messaging application.

Basically, you think a watch face might appeal to someone you know and you share it with them via iMessages.

If the person you send the dial to decides to reply directly to that share (by holding their finger down on it and using the reply function), BAM the Messaging app crashes.

Sharing and replying to an Apple Watch face in: Messages causes the bug on iOS 18. – photo-credit">9to5Mac.

No matter what you do, the Messaging app will continually crash.

We can close the application, restart our phone, nothing works. The application will continue to crash.

The only solution is to literally delete the conversation in which you shared the Apple Watch face.

This means that we will lose our entire conversation with this person and the files that we had shared.

What’s more, there’s no point in trying to restore the conversation later via iCloud, since the bug will come back and crash the app again.

In short, the bug remains rare and requires precise handling.

That being said, it’s also good to know so you don’t have to delete an entire conversation!

It is expected to be fixed through a future iOS 18 update.