Users have discovered a software flaw in iOS 27 that can temporarily freeze an iPhone by performing a rapid sequence of swipe gestures on the Home Screen. The trick has spread across social media as a prank to try with friends.
According to reports, the bug does not permanently disable the phone. Instead, it causes a temporary software freeze, often called a soft lock, which can be resolved easily by forcing a restart of the iPhone.
How the Freeze Happens
The trick begins on the Home Screen of an iPhone running iOS 27. The user swipes down from the top-left corner, as if opening Notification Center. After a brief moment, before Notification Center fully appears, the user swipes down from the top-right corner to open Control Center, then closes it.
If the steps succeed, the phone enters a temporary frozen state. During this state, the Camera and Flashlight buttons from the Lock Screen may appear stuck at the top of the screen.
Other signs of the bug include:
- Inability to navigate between Home Screen pages by swiping
- Some app interface elements not responding to touch
- Difficulty using the phone, making it effectively unusable
- The power-off slider may not respond when pressing and holding the side button
How to Recover Your iPhone
You can exit the frozen state by forcing a restart of the iPhone. This does not require a factory reset or deleting data.
To force restart an iPhone:
- Press the Volume Up button once.
- Press the Volume Down button once.
- Press and hold the Side button until the Apple logo appears.
After that, the phone restarts itself and returns to normal operation.
Bug Also Appears in Beta Versions
This is not the first issue of its kind in iOS. Similar glitches have appeared in previous versions, and Apple has typically addressed them through later software updates.
According to published testing, the bug could be reproduced on other iPhones running iOS 27.0. It also continued to appear in the iOS 27.2 beta, which is still under development.
Users may need to repeat the swipe gestures two or three times to trigger the bug, because the time window required to perform them is narrow.
It is not yet clear when an update to fix this problem will be released. However, a minor iOS 27 update is expected to address some of the errors that have appeared since its release a few days ago.