Instagram Story Randomly Freezes iPhones And No-One Knows Why

A random Instagram story is causing loads of people's iPhones to freeze and need rebooting, but no-one actually seems to know why.

The account, which - if you want to check it out - is called @pgtalal, has a story on that when viewed shows up only a line of Arabic.

iPhone users have reported viewing that story and then immediately having their phone freeze in their hand.

It's even been videoed for TikTok, and it appears as if it actually works.

Of course, if you do decide to go and view this story, you do so at your own risk, it's not recommended as it isn't good for your phone for it to freeze and need to restart unexpectedly.

In case you have decided to go ahead and give it a test - some people just can't help themselves - there is a pretty easy way to fix the problem.

If you have a frozen iPhone - which might make it difficult to read this, actually - you just need to press and release the volume up button quickly, then press the volume down button in exactly the same manner.

After you've done that, you need to press and hold the sleep/wake button until the phone screen goes blank.

Once you see that tell-tale Apple logo reappear, you'll know that the phone is on the point of rebooting and is going to make a full recovery.

Since it was discovered, a load of people have been trying to trick others into viewing the story and getting their phone to fail.

Twitter and TikTok have been awash with people warning others, as well as explaining how they were taken in by the trick.

One person simply said: "If somebody tells you to look at @pgtalal on instagram highlights don't do it."

We did tell you that earlier, but it bears repeating.

Another said: "Check if your phone is original or fake go to Instagram search for 'pgtalal' the first one with the highest followers, watch the first and second highlights."

Seriously, don't fall for that.

So, why does it happen? The simple answer is that no-one really knows yet.

One person devised this theory: "Pretty sure it's a binary exploit, I downloaded the raw picture data and found long strings of data, could be buffer overflow, I'm gonna try recreate it."

If you understood that, then great. If not, you're not alone.

Either way, it's an interesting phenomenon, but also completely pointless and annoying.

Featured Image Credit: PA

Topics: Instagram, Technology, Weird

Tom Wood

Tom Wood is a LADbible journalist and Twin Peaks enthusiast. Despite having a career in football cut short by a chronic lack of talent, he managed to obtain degrees from both the University of London and Salford. According to his French teacher, at the weekend he mostly likes to play football and go to the park with his brother. Contact Tom on [email protected]

@TPWagwim