With iOS 27 now being out and about, some users have found a bug which freezes iPhones running the latest Apple mobile operating system. The good news is twofold. First, it is only triggered by a very quick series of swipes from the home screen, and it’s specific enough that you’re quite unlikely to trigger this by accident. Second, the way to restore functionality to the affected iPhone is as simple as forcing a reboot.
9to5Mac has a demonstration of the steps needed to trigger the bug. As mentioned, this starts from the home screen, and from there, the first step is to swipe down from the top left corner of the screen. Rather than waiting for the Notification Centre to finish sliding down, you need to pull down from the top right corner instead to bring down the Control Centre. Then dismiss the Control Centre, and check if your iPhone is still responsive.
If it is not, as mentioned, restoring functionality is as simple as forcing a reboot. This, in turn, is done by pressing the volume up button once, then the volume down button once, and finally holding down the power button until the Apple logo appears. This signifies that the phone has begun the rebooting sequence, and once that’s done, the affected iPhone should be responsive again.
The report notes that these sorts of soft locks are common in various iOS versions, and this is among the simpler ones to trigger. But as you can see from the required steps, these look to be only possible with deliberate action, and when even something that can be “reliably” reproduced needs two to three attempts, it’s safe to assume that having this happen to you by accident is an indicator of your luck for the day. For what it’s worth, I’ve tried to do the same on an iPhone 17 while it was still on iOS 26.7, but was not able to recreate the issue.
(Source: 9to5Mac)
