Friends play tricks on friends; sometimes it’s something harmless like drawing on your face when you’re asleep. Other times, it’s something more extreme like crashing the Messages app on your iPhone. That app is an essential app; you cannot delete it from your iPhone even if you’re running iOS 10. There’s a new bug going around that lets someone crash your Messages app. As a result of this bug, your Messages app is rendered unusable. Here’s how the bug works and how you can fix it if you’ve fallen victim.
This bug was discovered by YouTuber user vincedes3 who has given steps to replicate it and to fix the problem. In all fairness, vincedes3 doesn’t appear to have created this with malicious intent. It appears only to be an exploit that was discovered and the user has found and duly provided the solution.
We aren’t going to show you how you can replicate the bug but the video linked to at the end of this post has all the details should you be interested. We hope the interest is a professional one and you aren’t looking to torment your friends because 2016 was bad enough.
What this bug does is, it has you send your friend/victim a contact file. The Messages app can save the file and add it to your contacts. If an iPhone user were to receive such a file, they would instinctively tap on it to save it. And that’s exactly when their Messages app will freeze.
Assuming you’ve fallen victim to the ‘prank’ you can fix it easily by visiting this link in Safari. That is all you need to do; just visit the link and accept the message that pops up. You will be able to use the Messages app again.
We’re going to get a little preachy here and advise you not to pull pranks like this on your friends. The Messages app is an essential app that people use daily for both personal and work messaging. The solution may be out there but you are seriously inconveniencing someone for laughs.