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

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.

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

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

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

Fix It Using A Third Party Keyboard

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.