Whatsapp has a bugs what does crash the app on android. This is the URL wa.me/settings, which should actually take you to the IM platform settings page. But the result is anything but: the app closes suddenly and, once the chat in which the link was typed is reopened, the crash repeats itself continuously. The bug also affects WhatsApp in the Business version.
How to fix
It’s not the first time something like this has happened, in 2018 typing an Indian character in the Telugu language had even caused the entire operating system to crash (in that case it was iOS 11) and the Springboard: it was enough to write it on WhatsApp, Messages, Gmail or Messenger. The case of wa.me/settings is however limited to Whatsapp, and apparently only on Android. As you can see in the tweet below, the problem also occurs if you write the URL as an update to your status.
I can confirm it will also crash the app when you attempt to share this url on your status.
PoC:
https[:/]/wa.me/settings pic.twitter.com/MYoCXoO9D9— Brute Bee (@BruteBee) May 30, 2023
HOW TO FIX
To avoid continuous crashes, the first logical solution is to not open the chat where the URL appears. Then the advice is to access WhatsApp from the web and to delete the offending message. This way the crash will not happen again. Meta will probably release an update to fix the root bug.
