Apple has finally released its latest iOS 18 to the public, and as more and more people are using the OS, more bugs are also coming to light. There's one such nasty bug in iOS 18 that's causing the Messages app to crash repeatedly. Spotted by a 9to5Mac reader and reported by the website, the bug can be particularly annoying because the Messages app is an essential part of most people's daily routine.
Fortunately, the bug is quite particular and the app only crashes after certain steps are followed. Below are the steps to reproduce the bug so you can vigilantly avoid it.
To avoid the bug: Don't reply to a shared Watch Face in Messages in a threaded reply.
The crash occurs only when someone replies in a threaded message to another message in the conversation containing a shared Watch Face from an Apple Watch in Messages.
watchOS has a handy feature that allows users to share their Watch Faces via Messages or Mail directly. This lets users easily share personalized Watch Faces with each other. Only sharing the Watch Face does not cause the Messages app to crash, though.
The Messages app crashes only when the other person replies to the specific Watch Face message in an inline reply, a feature introduced by Apple in iOS 14. The bug only seems to appear when the person sending the inline reply is on iOS 18. Sending an inline reply from iOS 18.1 (which is currently in beta) does not seem to cause the bug.
The bug seems to always cause the Messages app to crash when that particular conversation is opened. But even trying to send and reply to messages in other conversations becomes a difficult task as the app still crashes randomly. Furthermore, the crashes are happening for both the people involved in the conversation.
While replying from iOS 18.1 beta is not causing the bug, if the bug has already occurred because someone on iOS 18 replied, the Messages app is still crashing on iOS 18.1 beta, iPadOS 18.1 beta, and macOS 15.1 beta.
How to fix the issue?
While Apple should release a fix for the bug in a subsequent update, if you can't wait till then, you can fix the issue if it has already occurred on your device.
To fix the bug: You need to delete the conversation responsible for the crash from both devices. However, this would mean that you would lose the entire chat history for that conversation, including any attachments if they are not saved elsewhere.
Even implementing the fix itself can prove somewhat difficult, since the Messages app can repeatedly keep crashing. Especially if the conversation is open in the app, users can find themselves stuck in a loop of open and crash. But deleting the chat is the only way to fix the bug currently. You cannot also restore the chat from the 'Recently Deleted' folder after deleting it since it brings the bug back.
If you want your chat history back, you can try to restore it from an earlier backup (if it exists), and if you don't have Messages in iCloud enabled.
If you don't want to lose your chat history, you'll need to wait for an update from Apple. If another fix emerges in the meantime, we'll be sure to update it here.
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