Apple finally rolled out iOS 18 for the general public this week. However, it seems the latest OS has already started troubling users with bugs. The Messages app in iOS 18 has been reportedly plagued by a bug that triggers when you reply to a conversation thread involving Apple Watch faces. While the bug is fixable, it might cause data loss.
A nasty bug plagues the Messages app in iOS 18 causing it to crash repeatedly
To catch you up, Apple Watch has a feature that allows you to share watch faces over Messages or Mail, right from the watchOS. However, the feature seems to be troubling iOS 18 users in a very specific situation. Yesterday, folks over at 9to5Mac first reported that an annoying bug has been crashing the Messages app on iOS 18.
Now, you must be wondering what exactly happens when this bug plagues the Messages app on iOS 18. Well, the Messages app repeatedly crashes when you try to open the conversation in the app. What’s worse is you can’t even send or respond to conversations from other chats directly in Messages. Notably, the bug was first discovered by a 9to5Mac reader which cost him his Messages app data.
Upon receiving the tip, the publication reproduced the bug on their device to investigate what was happening. Well, this specific bug triggers whenever you reply to a shared Apple Watch face thread on the Messages app in iOS 18. For the uninitiated, the thread responses feature in the Messages app lets you have an inline conversation about a specific message earlier sent in the chat.
Resolving the issue may require you to lose your data
The recently discovered bug in iOS 18 affects both parties, the sender and the receiver of the Apple Watch face. Apparently, the bug only triggers when a user responds to the conversation from iOS 18, and not iOS 18.1. If you’re also noticing this bug on your iOS 18 device, there’s a quick fix you can try. Sadly, it comes with the cost of losing your chat history.
Once you notice the bug, both parties have to delete the conversation thread from their respective device. As the bug keeps crashing the Messages app, it is obvious that deleting the conversation thread can be challenging. Therefore, both parties have to remove all conversation history including attachments like photos and videos that aren’t saved outside of the Messages app.
Not to forget, restoring the deleted conversion thread from the recently deleted location may trigger the bug yet again. Therefore, we don’t recommend doing it until Apple patches this bug by pushing updates to iOS 18, watchOS 11, and macOS 15. If you care about the chat history and don’t want to delete it, you can wait for an update. But again, you’ll have to live with the crashing Messages app.