The iPhone X has finally arrived for most users on Friday, having almost sold out in pre-orders with many buyers set to wait weeks for their new phone to arrive. The flagship phone features facial recognition, an edge-to-edge screen, a lightning-fast processor, and is Apple’s most expensive phone ever made.
On Tuesday, Apple released iOS 11.1 for iPhone and iPad, the first big update to iOS 11 originally released in September, to patch a series of bugs affecting reachability, multitasking via 3D Touch and many others. The update also adds over 70 new emojis, a security fix for the so-called KRACK wireless network attack. However, among an entire list of benefits, it also squeezed a new bug that affects typing on your iPhone and iPad.
A series of users have experienced that when typing the capital letter “I” it autocorrects to an “A” with a strange question mark symbol (A [?]). For some, the “i” they typed is then showing up as a recently used emoji. If you are using the iOS keyboard’s Auto-Correct tool this glitch is very annoying.
While the bug doesn’t appear to affect all users, it’s widespread enough for Apple to be working on a fix for it. According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, Apple plans to fix the problem in forthcoming iOS beta and public releases that should come sometime this week. Apple has also said in a support document that a software update (presumably iOS 11.1.1) will be required to fix the issue properly.
But in the meantime, there is a workaround fix provided by Apple, until a real bug-fix software update is released. If you are affected by the bug that is changing capital “I” to an “A” alongside an unreadable Unicode symbol, try the following fix — Set up a text replacement for lowercase “i.”
Here’s How To Fix That Bizarre Autocorrect Bug on iPhones:
- Open Settings. Navigate to General > Keyboard > Text Replacement.
- Tap the Add button (+ icon) at the top-right corner to add a new rule.
- In the Phrase field, enter the uppercase ‘I’ character.
- In the Shortcut field, type the lowercase ‘i’ character.
- Add the text replacement.
- This will tell your phone to substitute a capital I whenever a standalone lowercase “I” is typed.
This isn’t ideal for long-term use, but until you wait for Apple to push out the iOS 11.1.1 update or 11.2, at least this fix will help you regain your sanity.
You can also try disabling the emoji keyboard, as the bug appears to be related to emojis somehow. Or you can simply turn off autocorrect as the bug is some combination of text rendering issue and autocorrect input.
Apple originally claimed the bug was linked to the release of iOS 11.1. However, the Wall Street Journal report found that some devices running iOS 11.0.3 also experienced the problem.
This is one of those peculiar issues that’s more funny than fatal, but it’s still a nuisance. Apple has yet to disclose what is causing the glitch in the first place. Users will have to wait until Apple releases more information regarding a permanent bug fix for this problem.
Ah, the A[?]rony.
