Paul Morris on February 16, 2018, 1:16 am

iOS 11.2.6 Will Likely Fix Indian Character Crash Bug But You Can Fix It Now By Updating To iOS 11.3 Beta

It’s largely agreed that Apple will issue a new software update in the coming week or so to fix the recently discovered crashing issue when a native Apple text control receives a specific Telugu character. It’s likely that update will be offered in the form of iOS 11.2.6 as a minor point update release solely with this fix.

If you don’t often communicate with anyone who uses the Telugu language to text or in social media status updates and aren’t really part of the online community for this type of thing, then it may have totally escaped you that yet another text-based issue has been identified in iOS, macOS and watchOS.

In a nutshell, the newly discovered issue in iOS 11.2.5 causes apps which embed a native Apple text control to crash when they receive a specific character from the Telugu Indian language. Apple has seemingly fixed this problem with the latest iOS 11.3 and macOS 10.13.4 betas but that doesn’t really help those sitting on current public versions.

Now that the bug is common knowledge, and it’s starting to be shared around social media, it means that Apple actually needs to act quickly in order to squash it. What generally happens here is that people start to prank their friends by sending messages with this character in, which, in turn, crashes or hangs their device. Instead of just letting this spread, Apple will likely release an iOS 11.2.6 update in the next week to rectify the problem and to allow device owners to upgrade to ensure that they are protected. As it currently stands, the only real solution to this right now is to register as a public tester and get access to the latest iOS 11.3 beta.

However, some people just aren’t comfortable using beta software, which is entirely understandable. Anyone who does want to get involved in the beta can not only get access to Apple’s pre-release software which contains the latest features and improvements but also resolve this niggling issue with immediate effect.

For those who simply can’t abide beta firmware, and who would prefer to hang tight, it’s a case of waiting until Apple releases iOS 11.2.6 to the general public with this patch included.