Open Radar

 
Summary:
Context: I’m a longtime TextExpander user and have embraced the iOS native ability to create similar expansions/shortcuts/snippets. In TextExpander, punctuation is frequently used as part of the “shortcut” or “trigger” phrase, since it can lead to unlikely-to-be-accidentally-typed shortcuts. E.g., “name--” can expand to “Timothy Cook”

Description: Certain keyboard shortcuts, especially those with punctuation like the @ sign, may trigger when unwanted. Particularly, if the non-punctuation part of the shortcut is typed just before a typo. In this case, autocorrect SOMETIMES decides to expand the first word into the expanded phase, even though this is unwanted.

Note on severity: This bug would be easy to work around by deleting bad snippets EXCEPT that this is actually impossible. See #21653540

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create the following text shortcut in Keyboard settings: “a@” expands to “apple@example.com”

2. Use the keyboard to type emails, notes, etc. Do NOT ever type “a@”, but DO type things like “a vicycle” [sic]  and other slightly mistyped phrases.

Expected Results:
Since the user never typed the shortcut, the shortcut should never trigger/expand.

Actual Results:
The shortcut will sometimes, rather unpredictably, expand into the text replacement.

If you experience trouble reproducing, continue to use your iOS device as normal over the next few days / weeks and you should be “lucky” enough to see this bug rear its head.

I apologize for being unable to come up with a foolproof way to reproduce this bug, but I’ve been living with it for 2.5 years now and can confirm it does happen still to this day, especially in conjunction with autocorrect.

Version:
iOS 8.4 (and every previous stable iOS release since shortcuts were added to iOS)

Notes:
SEE ALSO bug #21653540, which may or may not share underlying causes, but regardless acts as a complicating factor to this bug, together making work-arounds and solutions much harder. (I can't just delete the bad shortcuts!)

This bug is even more annoying for me personally since the snipped in question expands to an old work email.

There is also a small but real PRIVACY concern as the user may accidentally trigger the release of PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE information such as their email address when typing anonymous content on their iOS device, such as in an anonymous chat, online support group, or pseudonymous blog. (Chat can be live/unrecoverable. Even in a blog, well… you may have noticed that no one proofreads anymore.) This could even – GODS FORBID – bring down a politician.

Configuration:
iPhone 5s, iPhone 4s. Autocorrect must be on.