iPhone owners warned over iOS 18 text glitch that is causing app to crash – and the only fix has a devastating result

IPHONE owners must be wary of a new iOS 18 text glitch that results in significant data loss when users try to fix it.

The bug is triggered by a particular message sent from Apple Watch users and forces Apple's Messages app to crash repeatedly.

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Apple Watch lets owners share their watch face with their contacts over Messages or Mail, directly from the wrist-bound device.

But if someone using iOS 18 on an iPhone replies to that watch face message via a thread, the glitch will be triggered.

A threaded message is one that is a direct reply a previous message, and is a good way to revisit something said earlier in a chat.

They are commonly used in group chats, and grew popular on WhatsApp before Apple introduced them to its Messages app.

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Once the glitch is triggered, the Messages app will be essentially unusable for both the Apple Watch and iPhone user.

iPhone owners are not able to open other conversations in the app due to the platform repeatedly crashing.

The only way to 'break the curse', so to speak, is to delete the thread from each device.

This will requires deleting the conversation history from both devices, including attachments like photos, videos and voice notes.

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It can devastating to lose all that data, but unfortunately, it is the only known fix.

And restoring the deleted thread through an iCloud backup of your messages will only reintroduce the crash-bug.

It's important to note that the glitch is only present with iPhone operating on iOS 18.

Iterations of iOS 17 and the upcoming iOS 18.1 will not trigger the bug.

One of the upsides of waiting a few days or weeks to download a big system update is that the software that follows something like iOS 18 typically has all the bugs ironed out of it.

However, the iOS 18.1 update is not yet available, and is expected to roll out to iPhones in October.