How to Fix iOS 11.1’s Annoying Autocorrect Bug on iPhone

BY Khamosh Pathak

Published 6 Nov 2017

iOS 11 One handed keyboard featured

A weird autocorrect bug has been going around after iOS 11.1 dropped this past weekend. When you type the lowercase “i”, it autocorrects to capital “A”. And there are different versions of it. For some, it autocorrects to A[?].

If you’re facing the bug, you should know that Apple has acknowledged it and has issued a statement saying that it will be fixed in the next update. Till then, you’ll need to use a Text Replacement workaround.

What’s Really Happening

As Jeremy Burge of Emojipedia explains: “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 invisible character is used to provide an emoji appearance for the previous character. The correct behavior should that the invisible character is ignored altogether. But clearly, that’s not happening. Resulting in this bug.

Fix It Using Text Replacement

Step 1: Go to Settings -> General -> Keyboard -> Text Replacement.

iOS 11.1 Text Replacement Autocorrent Bug 2

Step 2: Tap on the + button at the top.

iOS 11.1 Text Replacement Autocorrent Bug 1

Step 3: Then, in the Phrase section, type the uppercase “I” and in the Shortcut section, type the lowercase “I”.

iOS 11.1 Text Replacement Autocorrent Bug 4

Step 4: Tap on Done and the text replacement shortcut will be saved.

iOS 11.1 Text Replacement Autocorrent Bug 3

Fix It Using A Third Party Keyboard

Gboard

It’s possible that the Text Replacement feature won’t fix the bug on your device. If that’s the case, you can try switching to a third party keyboard until Apple issues a fix. If you’re a power user, you should already be using a third-party keyboard that offers better productivity features.

Our recommendation is Gboard. It has emoji suggestions, GIF search, Google search and gesture typing built-in. But you can also try apps like SwiftKey and Swype.

Any Other iOS 11 Bugs?

Have you run into any weird iOS 11 bugs on your iPhone or iPad? Share with us in the comments below.