Apple releases patch to fix the Indian 'Telugu bug' on all platforms

Apple has released a patch for the Indian character bug that causes severe crashes on all platforms.

Apple has released a patch that will fix the so-called 'Telugu bug' on iOS, MacOS, tvOS and WatchOS. When users receive a message or notification that contains a certain Indian character, the app crashes and becomes unusable. In some cases, the bug even results in the device entering a bootloop.

Jonathan Maes, Published 02/20/2018

Apple has released macOS 10.13.3 and iOS 11.2.6, which both contain fixes for the 'Telugu bug'. Updates for watchOS and tvOS are also available to download. This bug was first reported by an Italian tech site and has been quite a plague ever since with the potential to brick someone's device.

User discovered that it was possible to crash your Apple device by sending a specific character from the Indian Telugu language. Receiving a message or a notification with this character would result in the app crashing over and over again until the message was deleted, crashing the home screen altogether or even endless reboots. The bug has been reported working on Messages, Twitter and even Mac OS's built-in networking app.

In addition to the Indian character fix, iOS 11.2.6 also "fixes an issue where some third-party apps could fail to connect to external accessories."

Apple previously stated that they would mainly fix existing bugs and improve the overall user experience in the upcoming iOS 12 software instead of working on new features, as the latest main software update introduced a plethora of new problems. The upcoming iOS 11.3 system software and its beta version are also immune to the Telugu bug and will offer a number of new features, including the possibility to disable throttling due to a degrading battery and an improved version of ARKit.