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Some iPhone and iPad users appear to be experiencing a curious bug in Safari at the current time, with the app crashing when certain search terms are entered. The bug has been going on since last night, from what we can tell, and affected users are running a variant of iOS 16, though there are also reports from iOS 15 users.

safari-icon-blue-banner.jpeg

Reports suggest that Safari crashes after the first three letters of select words are typed into the search bar, and it is not clear what's causing the issue. We've seen reports of "tar," "bes," "wal," "wel," "old," "sta," "pla," and other words crashing the app. What happens is that people attempt to type in something like "Walmart" or "Starbucks" or "best" and do not get beyond the first three letters before Safari crashes.


It is not clear what is causing this issue, and not all users appear to be affected at this time. It is affecting those running iOS 15.7.1, iOS 16, iOS 16.1, iOS 16.1.1, and the iOS 16.2 beta, and Apple does appear to be aware of the problem due to reports people have provided to the support team.


Given that this issue popped up overnight, it is likely some kind of server side bug that Apple will be able to resolve without an iOS update.

Update: The Safari crashing bug has now been fixed.

Article Link: Some iPhone and iPad Users Seeing Strange Safari Crashes When Searching [Update: Fixed]
 
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Please, no one do the usual safari response. As for this bug, not seeing it yet. Hope it gets fixed soon.
 
Looks like the phone app is crashing when trying to pull up Siri reference'd sites.

It did happen to me when typing in "Wel". Fixed it by going to www.wellsfargo.com, and now when I typed in "Wel" afterwards, it referenced Wellsfargo.com as a recommended search hit.
 
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Not seeing a crash. I'm using Duck Duck Go, just like the user in the video.

As far as a fix, it's crashing so there's going to have to be a device-side fix eventually. But hopefully it's something Apple's servers are sending down to the device causing the crash and Apple can stop the poisoned data from being sent down.
 
I just tried on my iPhone 14 Pro. Typed these three letters - WAL - and Safari was fine. However, the second I tapped an M, Safari crashed. I then tried WAL + every other latter in the alphabet with no crashes except the W. It to causes the same Safari crash as the M. Safari clearly not liking the pointy letters.

Edit: Just confirmed the same experience on an iPad mini 6. Both it and my 14 Pro are running the most top-to-date OSes.
 
Safari might be a fast browser, I noticed pages crash often lately. Even with extensions disabled.
Not just talking about the issue in this article but in a general way.
 
Doesn't happen to me. I use private relay which can block google suggestions so maybe that's why?
 
Crashes don’t happen in incognito mode. Switched to regular mode and insta-crashed When trying “Wal”.
 
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Not happening here. Tried a few of the listed words and none made Safari crashing (iPhone 13 on iOS 16.1.1). I wonder if the locale settings of the device might also have something to do with it, as my phone is set to Portuguese.

PS: tried with both DuckDuckGo and Google as the default search engine and no problem on either.
 
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Triggering behind the scenes actions with certain search results. Not implemented that carefully.
 
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