Short 'Prank' Video Will Slowly Crash Your iPhone

Only a reboot will fix it.

Tech-savvy pranksters have devised yet another way to crash your iPhone.

A seemingly innocuous video link circulating on iMessage and other messaging platforms causes Apple’s smartphones to freeze up.

Devices continue to work for several seconds after displaying the video, but gradually grind to a halt, ultimately requiring a forced reboot.

Closing the mp4 clip before it finishes won’t stop the bug, which has been shown to crash Apple smartphones from the iPhone 4 onwards and operating systems all the way back to iOS 5.

Phones targeted by the bug appear to function normally once they have been restarted.

Owners of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus can reboot their devices by holding down the power and down volume buttons. Earlier devices are reset using the power and home screen buttons.

No one is certain exactly how the bugs work, but some suspect it triggers a memory leak.

It’s not the first time iOS has been affected by a crash bug. A particular string of text was shown to disable iMessage on iPhones last year - iOS 8.4 fixed the bug.

We’ve approached Apple for comment and will update as soon as hear more.

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