Some owners of Apple’s iPhone devices are complaining lately of a weird bug on iOS that sometimes corrects the letter I into an emoji that features a question mark inside a box (often preceded by an exclamation mark, a letter A, and even a hashtag symbol). According to Emojipedia, the bug appears to be in the autocorrect software of iOS 11.1.
Apple, however, has since posted a support document with regards to the issue. According the support document, the bug may be present in iPhone units, as well as iPad and iPod Touch devices that have been updated to iOS 11 (or newer version). Apple has stated that it is working on a software update that should fix the issue, and has also taken the opportunity to offer a set of instructions that iOS mobile users can follow in order to work around the bug.
Basically, Apple device owners need only head to Settings, and then General, and then Keyboard, and tap Text Replacement. From there, they will need to click the plus (+) sign, and then for Phrase, key in a capital letter I, and then for Shortcut, key in a small letter I. What exactly does this work around fix do? Essentially, it will place more importance on the manually added user text replacement, thereby overriding the boxed question mark emoji that iOS is automatically suggesting.
For those who do not mind checking out the technical stuff behind the bug, know that as pointed out by Emojipedia, the letter I is reportedly being appended with the Variation Selector 16, which is an invisible code point that requires that the preceding character be rendered in the form of an emoji (hence, the boxed question mark being displayed instead of the normal letter I).
Needles to say, the bug is kind of annoying (except perhaps for those who like leet speak), even if the issue is a minor one. Also, it is quite possible that for some iOS mobile users, the work around fix as recommended earlier in this post will not work. Because the bug is related to the rendering of emoji characters, users can try to deactivate the emoji keyboard. If nothing works, then affected users will have to endure the issue until Apple can roll out the fix by way of a software update. Or, they can just try not using the letter I when typing, which might be easier said than done.
