If Apple’s battery life issues weren’t enough for the company to worry about, it now has to contend with a particularly nasty iMessage bug that’s currently doing the rounds.
Called ‘chaiOS’ this devilishly simple bug is contained within a GitHub website link. All a person has to do is click on the link within iMessage and the iPhone will immediately start to slow down, freeze and restart itself.
9TO5Mac reports that the bug also works on MacBooks if sent over iMessage, resulting in similar problems including crashing and freezing.
The bug was found by Abraham Masri who claims he shared it as a demonstration to show Apple that it needs to take these smaller, but no less annoying, bugs more seriously.
According to those that have been on the receiving end of the bug the only way to stop the bug from slowing down your iPhone, iPad or MacBook is to delete the entire message thread.
It’s important to note that this bug doesn’t currently seem to do any permanent damage to the phone, making it more of a nuisance than anything else.
That being said we’ll be keeping an eye on whether any more serious side-effects are detected and if Apple is planning on patching it.
For now, if you get sent a mysterious GitHub link through iMessage from a friend, we’d probably just delete the message as soon as you get it.