Five iOS 7 Bugs and How to Work Around Them

iOS 7's most notable bugs and glitches enumerated.

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Like any just-released operating system, iOS 7 has bugs. But, you know, Apple, so everyone’s poring over iOS 7’s glitches like armchair forensic experts. Not that some of these issues aren’t noteworthy, and it helps no one to downplay a security bug that, for instance, lets you access and/or transmit someone’s private photos and videos, or make phone calls to anyone in the world without entering a passcode.

Still, the list of goofs is relatively short. Here’s the lineup so far:

Bypass iOS 7’s Lock Screen

The first wave-making issues surfaced within 24 hours of iOS 7’s launch — a series of unlikely gestures that’ll get you past iOS 7’s Lock Screen and into the multitasking app view. The good news: most apps can’t be launched and appear as unresponsive translucent gray rectangles. The bad news: you can access the camera app and rifle through all of the device’s photos and videos, viewing, printing, deleting or forwarding them on — via email, AirPlay, SMS, Twitter, Facebook, iCloud, Flickr, YouTube or Vimeo — to whomever you like.

How to fix: disable Control Center, the swipe-up panel accessible by default outside the phone’s Lock Screen:

1. Go to “Settings.”

2. Select “Control Center.”

3. Disable “Access on Lock Screen.”

Make calls from a locked iPhone

This disturbing glitch, first noticed by Forbes, allows you to make a call to any number — domestic, international, you name it — by futzing with the iPhone’s emergency call feature. All you have to do is slide to unlock your iPhone, tap the “Emergency” option at lower left, dial the number you’d like to call, then hammer the green call button for several seconds until the phone goes black and pops up the white Apple icon (apparently signifying a crash), at which point the phone will dial the number and you’re in business.

How to fix: Alas, you’ll have to wait until Apple issues a fix, or hold off buying a new iPhone or upgrading to iOS 7 (if you haven’t already).

Drag your apps around after launch

This one sounds harmless enough and takes some doing to reproduce: a glitch related to the new multitasking view where apps appear miniaturized in a scrollable lineup. After launching an app, if you swipe your finger rapidly back and forth across it, you can sometimes get it to shift to its mini-sized multitasking version, then wiggle it around the screen like a card in Microsoft’s Solitaire.

How to fix: don’t swipe your finger rapidly back and forth over an app.

iOS 7 repeatedly logs out of apps

iOS 7 seems to be logging users out of certain apps, namely Mailbox and Snapchat, reports The Verge, which confirmed the issue with Mailbox. While Apple hasn’t acknowledged the bug publicly, Mailbox believes it has to do with the way iOS 7 handles background refreshing. The company removed this in a Mailbox app update that it says “drastically reduces the likelihood” of logouts occurring. The full list of afflicted apps is unknown, but may include PayPal, Evernote and YouTube.

How to fix: check with the app’s vendor to see if there’s an update available or in the offing until Apple issues a fix.

General user interface glitches

Treat these as hearsay, since any one of the images at the following link could be doctored, but a Tumblr dubbed Sloppy UI has a visual lineup of what appear to be iOS 7 user interface and layout goofs, from overlapping links and alignment errors to missing keypad letters and illegible text. Minor cosmetic interface issues are inevitable when makeovers as significant as iOS 7 occur, and you can expect the legitimate ones to be scoured away in future updates.

How to fix: if an app’s displaying random visual errors, common sense applies. Back out, shut down and reload (or if that doesn’t work, consider performing a hard reset by holding the power and home buttons simultaneously until a black screen with Apple’s logo appears and the phone reboots).