Some recent emojis being sent as stickers, rather than being added to current text message

[MMachado05]

• [x] I have searched open and closed issues for duplicates
• [x] I am submitting a bug report for existing functionality that does not work as intended
• [x] This isn't a feature request or a discussion topic

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Bug description

When selecting emojis from the "recent" tab in the emoji keyboard, Signal will unpredictability think some emojis are intended to be sent with the message being typed, while others are sent on their own immediately after selection as a sticker. I'll include a video of the behavior in the Screenshots section.

I tested this without recording beforehand, and the emojis being treated as stickers were different, so which emojis will be erroneously sent on their own seems unpredictable. This may be related to #5954

Steps to reproduce

• Begin typing a message.
• From your recent emojis tab, select various emojis

Actual result: Some are correctly added next to the cursor in your text, while others are suddenly sent as stickers

Expected result: All selected emojis (assuming they are emojis, and not stickers/images displayed as emojis) are simply added to the text.

Screenshots

Here are two recordings; the ❌ you see in the first one was from the ❌ being treated as a sticker, but it isn't anymore in these tests (for some reason)

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/2de45746-39b9-486c-9b95-f8528284b2d9

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/07d098d7-f87f-40d2-8874-91cdcb0e1645

Device info

Device: iPhone 16

iOS version: 18.3.1

Signal version: 7.46 (615)

Link to debug log

I couldn't find the setting to "enable debug logs," but I did find the link to the current debug log, though I'm not sure if it's the right one. Please let me know if I've done this step incorrectly so that I can fix it!

https://debuglogs.org/ios/7.46.0/919876c45be8e58d88d8f3ae7c0b05b6b7ebe19bd584ec8e7531755724f784d2.zip

[MMachado05]

Bug observed in 7.47 (625):

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/5012a571-b5dc-4920-92a5-ceb98414bf4d

[xaderfos]

I can confirm the same behaviour. Also on iPhone. It started in the last month or so for me. It is very confusing. And even though some emojis are indeed stickers from the extra menu with all the animal emoji/stickers some are normal emojis that instead get posted as stickers.

[MMachado05]

Bug observed in 7.49 (654):

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/2bd6ab3d-bfa8-4bc0-bfc6-dce14a3976d6

[MMachado05]

Bug observed in 7.51 (681):

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/3e8c484e-c5e4-4b9c-80cf-f5ba89fc42b6

[sashaweiss-signal]

Hi, thanks for reporting. This is something we've started seeing with recent iOS versions, something like 18.3+. As far as we can tell, Apple is injecting sticker-versions-of-emoji into the "recents" tab in their emoji picker, and so tapping on them sends immediately because from Signal's perspective they're actually a sticker.

Thanks for your patience – we're trying to figure out the best way forward.

[MMachado05]

Hi, thanks for reporting. This is something we've started seeing with recent iOS versions, something like 18.3+. As far as we can tell, Apple is injecting sticker-versions-of-emoji into the "recents" tab in their emoji picker, and so tapping on them sends immediately because from Signal's perspective they're actually a sticker.

Thanks for your patience – we're trying to figure out the best way forward.

Shoot, you're absolutely right; I can reproduce this behavior in WhatsApp. Let me know if I ought to close this issue, considering it's a problem with upstream!

However, the strange A characters that appear in my text field (as shown in the most recent bug video) are very odd, and those don't appear on WhatsApp.

[sashaweiss-signal]

I can reproduce this behavior in WhatsApp.

Thank you for this intel – that's super helpful to know, and confirms my theory. I'm fine keeping the issue open for now, since we're still exploring options to work around what is still a super confusing UX.

However, the strange A characters that appear in my text field (as shown in the most recent bug video) are very odd, and those don't appear on WhatsApp.

Yeah, that is strange. Given they're going into the text field they must be emoji – what iOS version are you on? I wonder if those are emoji that Signal doesn't yet support, or emoji that a new iOS beta is messing with.

[MMachado05]

@sashaweiss-signal I've recorded the following videos on iOS 18.3.2 running on an iPhone 16; I don't have any beta software installed.

Signal:

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/4bed65f9-2f51-492d-bcf7-ec5b8ef7c36b

WhatsApp:

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/dfb3bd31-62fe-470d-b1ab-cd743e6308d3

Notably, on Signal, the odd characters get rendered and the cursor jumps to a position other than the end of the line.

[sashaweiss-signal]

Great, thanks for the videos. We'll keep exploring this, as we know it's a really frustrating UX, but also want to be cautious given there's some strange iOS behavior here as well.

[mikez]

Thanks for reporting @MMachado05 and the clarification @sashaweiss-signal.

I tried the same in the Messages.app on iOS and there it works as expected. The same recent emoji is NOT posted as a sticker, but rather it's put into the message box and I can add to it. Do you see the same behavior @MMachado05?

[sashaweiss-signal]

The same recent emoji is NOT posted as a sticker, but rather it's put into the message box

This has to do with product differences between iMessage and Signal, specifically that iMessage doesn't auto-send stickers at all. It's still a sticker under the hood, but it's less obvious in iMessage.

[mikez]

This has to do with product differences between iMessage and Signal, specifically that iMessage doesn't auto-send stickers at all. It's still a sticker under the hood, but it's less obvious in iMessage.

Further observations:

1. in iMessage, if the first character is any regular emoji (not only recents), said emoji is automatically inserted as a sticker in the message box;
2. if I keep typing into said box, the sticker is automatically converted into a regular emoji.

Thus, I hypothesize that the issue arises for those of us who use both iMessage and Signal due to the differences in how it handles and remembers stickers.

[MalEbenSo]

Confirmed for a friend and myself.

Thank you for keeping this open, even though the core reason seems outside of Signal as noted by @sashaweiss-signal

Hoping that you find a way to work around this in Signal or to sort it out with Apple providing a fix.

[MMachado05]

It seems to me as though the "sending as a sticker" behavior is definitely upstream in iOS, but I figure the strange A characters might be within a more fixable range!

[mikez]

@MMachado05 It seems to me, the core issue is an expectation mismatch. In Messages.app, the expectation is that you can always edit a message before you send it, this includes when inserting a sticker. In Signal.app, emoji-stickers are auto-sent. In Messages.app, the sticker is inserted into a text field... and depending on the context, it will be inserted as a regular emoji or turn into a regular emoji if you keep typing.

[sashaweiss-signal]

This issue is ultimately due to https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/issues/5954, which was just addressed in https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/pull/6082. I'm going to close this issue now – we can reopen if this still happens after version 7.69 is released!

[sashaweiss-signal]

Sorry, I was slightly over-eager. #6082 should mitigate this in that disabling "stickers in Emoji keyboard" will now be respected, and these emoji-that-send-immediately are sneakily stickers. If you have stickers in the Emoji keyboard enabled, you might still experience this.

We'll be looking into workarounds here!

[iwittkau]

I observed something related in the current version 7.68 (882) on iOS 18.5:

If I type an 👌🏻 emoji at the end of a message, it sends the emoji as a sticker and the rest of the message is deleted.

[github-actions[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[github-actions[bot]]

This issue has been closed due to inactivity.

[MMachado05]

It seems this issue was automatically closed by the actions bot; @sashaweiss-signal, do you know if the workarounds being explored would justify keeping it open? Or is it perhaps a more upstream issue regarding how iOS deals with emojis and stickers?

[andrioid]

Still very much an issue for me. It's very frustrating to be writing something and then flood the entire screen with a giant emoji. Disabling the Stickers feature in the Keyboard settings helps; but I think the obvious work-around is that if there's text in the field, then don't auto-send stickers.