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Watchdog Termination

A Watchdog Termination on iOS occurs when the operating system kills an app for violating certain rules regarding time or resource usage.
This can happen if:

  • an app uses too much memory,
  • consumes excessive CPU leading to device overheating,
  • performs synchronous networking on the main thread,
  • if the main thread is blocked for too long12.

In crash reports, these terminations are often identified by the termination reason code 0x8badf00d, which humorously stands for "ate bad food".

If you’re developing an app and encountering these terminations, it’s crucial to ensure that your app’s main thread remains responsive and that resource-intensive tasks are handled appropriately in the background.