A text string with an Italian flag and Sindhi characters blocks iOS devices.

here appears to be a new font-related bug in Messages, Mail and other apps that can cause iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch to crash when receiving a specific character string.

In this particular case, the character string involves the Italian flag emoji along with Sindhi language characters and the system appears to crash when an incoming notification is received with the characters causing the problem.
Based on information shared on Reddit, the character string started circulating on Telegram, but was also found on Twitter.

These types of character related bugs can be particularly annoying, as they can cause iOS or iPadOS to get stuck in re-boot loops .

A similar bug started circulating in 2018 and included a Telugu language font.

The problem appears to have been resolved in the latest beta version of iOS 13.4.5 , but that update is not yet available to everyone. In general, Apple quickly implements a solution for these problems, so we should expect iOS 13.4.2 or even iOS 13.4.5 to be released to everyone soon.

A temporary solution, until Apple releases software updates to solve the problem, is to disable banner type notifications on your devices, or install the public beta of iOS 13.4.5.

If you received a message with that string, the only way to resolve it is to restore in DFU.

Here is a video showing the bug in action:

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