This 3-Second Video is Causing iPhones to Crash

iPhone users, if you receive a short MP4 video that looks something like the image above, don’t click on it! Beware of the three-second video that may seem harmless at first, but it actually contains a bug that causes your phone to start lagging and eventually stop functioning altogether.

The video is from a video-sharing app called Miaopai. It plays normally just like any other video. But once it’s finished and you continue using your phone, you may notice that it either doesn’t turn back on, takes a minute to lock up, freezes on the home screen or displays a logo loading on a black screen.

However, this bug doesn’t necessarily destroy your phone permanently. You’ll just need to do a forced reboot to revive your precious piece of technology and return its functions back to normal. According to The Next Web, the video could be a corrupt file which sparks a memory leak chain when you open it in a web browser. This paralyses the operating system from handling the problem as it multiplies, causing it to slow down the device rapidly.

Watch this video for a more in-depth demonstration of what this bug does to various generations of iPhones and iOS operating systems: