iOS 18 bug can cause Messages app to crash – here's how to avoid data loss

Apple finally released iOS 18 on Monday and like clockwork the bugs are coming out of their holes.

It all starts with Apple Watch. You can share a watch face with someone else directly through Messages or Email. The idea is to give other people access to a personalized watch face that you've tweaked yourself.

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Next, let's say the recipient uses Messages in iOS 18 to reply to any text in a conversation thread that includes the shared watch face. With iOS 14 and later, you can reply directly to any previous message in a thread by simply pressing on it and tapping Reply.

However, if you are using iOS 18, don't do that.

If your phone has iOS 18, replying inline to a message using the shared watch face apparently causes the Messages app to crash. Not only that, but you could also lose all the messages in the conversation. The bug was discovered by someone who shared the discovery with 9to5Mac, who was then able to reproduce the issue.

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But the problem doesn't end here. When you encounter this error, Messages crashes repeatedly when you try to open the conversation in the app. This means that sending or replying to messages in other conversations may also be impossible. Moreover, both the sender and the recipient of the shared watch face message fall into the same trap once the error occurs.

On the plus side, replying to the message won't trigger the bug if you're using iOS 18.1, which is currently available as a developer beta — as long as you don't use the “threaded replies” feature. Doing so in a conversation that includes the split watch face will crash Messages on iOS 18.1 beta, iPadOS 18.1 beta, and macOS 15.1 beta, 9to5Mac explained.

Also: Is iOS 18 draining your iPhone's battery? Here's why and what you can do

Since the app keeps crashing, it is difficult to take any action to fix the problem. The only solution at the moment is to delete the entire conversation if possible, but this will delete all the contents of the thread, including messages and attached photos and videos. Even restoring the deleted conversation will not help as it would cause the error to reappear.

Those of you with iOS 18 and an Apple Watch should refrain from sharing watch faces through the Messages app for now. If you see a shared watch face in a conversation, don't reply to it or any other message in the thread. Given this and other glitches affecting the latest versions of Apple's operating systems, your best bet is to wait for a bug-fix update, which will hopefully be available in the near future.