It seems that iOS 9.3 is causing unexpected behavior when tapping web links, as evidenced by Twitter and a growing thread on the Apple Support Communities forums. Hundreds of affected users are reporting that the latest iPhones, and some older devices, become unresponsive or crash after tapping or tapping-and-holding web links in both first and third-party apps such as Safari, Messages, Mail, Notes, Google Chrome and more. For others, tapping on links does nothing.
Other people claim they were plagued with the same issue on iOS 9.2 devices, with some users claiming they heard from an Apple Support representative that the company is aware of the issue and is working on a fix, which should be released soon.
Apple is yet to comment on the issue.
Here’s a video of how long-tapping a link to open in the background crashes Safari.
iOS developer Steven Troughton-Smith suspects the issue might be caused by third-party apps. Specifically, he found that installing Booking.com’s app on his system broke link handling across iOS.
And here’s Booking.com’s app crashing due to the issue.
The pervasiveness of the issue suggests it can probably be traced to a bug in Apple’s WebKit rendering engine that Safari and every other iOS app which renders web content is required to use. A possible workaround involving disabling JavaScript in Settings → Safari > Advanced may help, but is limited to Safari as other apps remain affected.
According to Twitter, a partial fix for Google Chrome users includes tapping and holding a link in Chrome and opening it in a new tab.
Have you been affected by this problem and what, if any, workaround did you discover?
Source: Apple Support Communities