By now you probably know that there’s a seriously annoying bug in iOS 11.1 affecting autocorrect. When trying to type the letter “I” autocorrect changes it to “A ⍰” making the message seem like you’re drunk. At first, it’s a bit comical but then it becomes infuriating. Forbes quotes Jeremy Burge who has a pretty good explanation of why this is happening below.
“What’s really going on is that the letter ‘I’ is being appended with an invisible character known as Variation Selector 16 when auto-correct kicks in to replace the lowercase ‘i’. This VS-16 character is intended to be used to make the previous character have emoji appearance. When used in conjunction with the letter ‘I’ it displays in some apps as ‘A ⍰’.” wrote Jeremy Burge, the Editor in Chief of Emojipedia, in a blog post. “The correct behavior should be to ignore the invisible variation selector if the previous character doesn’t have an emoji version.”
Apple has offered up a workaround until they address the bug in their next iOS update.
Apple suggested a workaround by setting up a Text Replacement for the letter “i.” This can be done by going to the Settings app > General > Keyboard > Text Replacement. Then tap on the “+” icon and in Phrase, type an uppercase “I”. And for the shortcut, type a lowercase “i”. By changing this setting, it will make sure the iOS device uses an “i” or an “I” rather than an “A” with a symbol.
While this workaround is going to help, there’s an easier fix to the issue: simply switch to a 3rd party keyboard. I use Google’s GBoard and the bug does not affect my use of the letter “I” at all. It’s pretty straightforward to replace your iOS keyboard, here are the steps.
- Download a keyboard like GBoard, SwiftKey, or TouchPal (I recommend GBoard)
- Open the keyboard app and follow the instructions
- Open Settings
- Open General
- Open Keyboard
- Open Keyboards
- Open Add New Keyboard
- Pick the downloaded keyboard
- Allow full access and you should be good to go
Next time you go into an app that needs a keyboard, you’ll just have to tap the globe to switch to the keyboard you downloaded. The beauty of GBoard (and other keyboards) is that it allows you to swipe to text, which I find super convenient.
Are you experiencing this autocorrect bug on iOS 11.1? Are you using Apple’s workaround or a third party keyboard to get around the issue? Let know in the comments below or on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.
[button link=”https://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2017/11/07/apple-confirms-ios-11-1-autocorrect-bug-and-suggests-this-workaround/#3a2d71216b7a” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: Forbes[/button]
