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This single text message is crashing people’s iPhones (Here’s how to stop it)

Apple’s iPhones have been subject of a new bug that shuts down your phone after receiving the message “effective. Power لُلُصّبُلُلصّبُررً ॣ ॣh ॣ ॣ 冗”. Yes I just told all of you how to effectively troll your iPhone using friends.

Note some places are saying this works regardless of what they are doing. I tested it out on my partner without warning her and found if the phone is locked it does nothing, they have to be on the phone in an app. I also found it works via WhatsApp.

The second half of the text is Arabic and Unicode, the Unicode is the important bit, the code that runs the banner notification system cannot process the Unicode but rather than realise this and give up the phone continues to try causing it to crash and reboot. It should be fine after a reboot but some user reported it will continue to crash until a new message is sent. I have not been able to replicate this.

Here’s the fix: head into your Settings app, then the Notifications tab, Messages and then switch off the slider called “show on local screen and under “alert style when unlocked” choose “none”. This will stop banner notifications but if your friends like to troll you it may be worth doing until Apple fixes the issue.

Apple News on Twitter has spoken to Apple’s Senior Engineers who admitted they know there is a problem. Expect a fix soon.