Article in iOS App Development category.

How To Fix iVirus: If you type the letter “i” and it autocorrects to an “A” with a symbol

What Is The "I" Bug? When you type the letter i, your iPhone predictive text shows that you're about to insert a weird A[?] symbol,…

What Is The "I" Bug?

When you type the letter i, your iPhone predictive text shows that you're about to insert a weird A[?] symbol, but when you actually type out the I, it looks totally normal. This is what it looks like:

But when you see your iMessage on your laptop, it looks all crazy, like this:

How To Fix The "I" Bug

Follow these steps to fix the bug:

  1. Delete every message with "I" (as a standalone letter) since the issue first started happening
    1. In a message conversation, touch and hold the message bubble that you want to delete, then tap More.
    2. Tap  delete message, then tap Delete Message. If you want to delete all messages in the thread tap Delete All, in the upper-left corner. Then tap Delete Conversation.
  2. This alone might fix the issue, but not always. If you've done step 1 and still have the issue, keep following this list.
  3. Reset your Keyboard Dictionary: Go to Settings > General > Reset > Reset Keyboard Dictionary
  4. Restart your phone
  5. If you still have the issue, it means you didn't actually delete every message with an offending "I" in it. Unfortunately, these messages render like a normal "I" on your iPhone. But in the Messages app on a Mac, you'll be able to see the crazy square rendering and more quickly locate offending messages to delete off your iPhone.

What else is known about this bug?

  • So far, we've confirmed this bug affects all versions of iOS 11 but not iOS 10
  • This bug does not appear to affect MacOS
  • Getting this "virus" seems to happen when you receive a text with the offending character, though it isn't perfectly consistent in spreading. This may be due to how iOS 11's AI decides to process receiving this "new" character

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