A Facebook glitch is crashing popular iOS apps: Details here
What's the story
If you are running into frequent app crashes on your iPhone, you are probably not alone!
A number of iOS users have reported instances of apps going haywire in the last few hours.
The problem has affected popular services like Pinterest, PUBG, Spotify, Tinder, Waze, and TikTok, and appears to be associated with a glitch on Facebook's side.
Here's more about it.
Issue
Apps crashing soon after launching them
According to Twitter and DownDetector.com reports, several iOS apps are crashing immediately after being launched.
They open for a second and then suddenly disappear, taking the user back to the grid of apps on their home screen.
In some cases, launching the app without the internet does work but the functionality of the service goes away due to no connectivity.
Twitter Post
Here is the issue in action
Is anyone else having issues opening...any apps on iPhone? pic.twitter.com/JjEkkojVWa
— Rosie Percy (@rosiepercy) July 10, 2020
Cause
Facebook appears to be the problem
As several popular apps continue to run into issues, users and developers claimed that the problem is not at their end.
Instead, they said, the glitch is associated with a Facebook SDK that allows apps to authenticate user logins through the social network.
And, weirdly, it affects people even if they have not used the Facebook login option to sign into a particular app.
Acknowledgement
Social network has acknowledged the glitch
In light of all the complaints, Facebook has acknowledged the matter, confirming that the problem stems from its own SDK.
"We are aware and investigating an increase in errors on the iOS SDK which is causing some apps to crash," the company said in a statement shared on its developer platform, without clarifying when the glitch would be fixed.
Repetition
Similar problem occurred in May, leaving apps affected for hours
While the issue is pretty annoying, it is not the first time iOS users are dealing with something like this.
Back in May, a similar glitch with Facebook's login SDK affected a number of iPhone apps for hours.
In both cases, this time and the last time, the issue did not affect apps on Google's Android operating system.