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Here’s Apple’s Fix for a Catastrophic iPhone Bug

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Apple Starts iPhone 6 Sales In Germany
A shopper ltries out the new Apple iPhone 6 at the Apple Store on the first day of sales of the new phone in Germany on September 19, 2014 in Berlin, Germany.Sean Gallup—Getty Images
By Chris Matthews / Fortune

Calling all iPhone users: you can breathe a sigh of relief.

Thursday night, Apple published a temporary fix to a strange bug that causes a user’s messaging app to unexpectedly quit after receiving a “specific series of unicode characters,” that appear to be a combination of symbols and arabic-language characters. If this happens to you, just follow these simple steps. (Yes, you’ll have to get Siri involved):

  • Ask Siri to “read unread messages.”
  • Use Siri to reply to the malicious message. After you reply, you’ll be able to open Messages again.
  • In Messages, swipe left to delete the entire thread. Or tap and hold the malicious message, tap More, and delete the message from the thread.

    • Apple plans to permanently fix the bug in an upcoming software update.

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