Has anyone run into what I just have? I have Smart Quotes off system-wide, and certainly off in Messages, and yet the computer is replacing my straight quotes with curly ones.
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Smart Quotes forced on in Messages?
- Thread starter joeyconnick
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I can't reproduce the issue in Messages in Big Sur 11.2 with Settings > Keyboard > smart quotes disabled, and no Messages > Edit > Substitutions > Smart Quotes on. Can you give us more details about which Big Sur version you're running and what your keyboard input is? Does the issue occur in other apps?
Yes. Same issue. Also having an issue where sometimes with long messages as I'm typing it will randomly replace a chunk of the message with an apostrophe.
Seems like the new Messages app in Big Sur is pretty buggy.
Seems like the new Messages app in Big Sur is pretty buggy.
Finally, someone besides me with this issue! I've been suffering from this exact bug ever since upgrading to Big Sur.
As fishcharlie describes, it generally crops up when typing/editing longer Messages. One or more characters throughout the text will be randomly replaced with single curly apostrophes or sometimes, curly quotation marks. In some cases, entire blocks of text are randomly moved, garbled, or deleted.
An interesting symptom: shortly before this bug occurs, red squiggly underlines (the kind used to indicate misspelled words) will pop-up randomly throughout the message. The underlined text is NOT misspelled and there's no clear pattern to which text will be affected. But when this spurious red underlining occurs, the text garbling and apostrophe/quote replacement is about to begin. Copying all of the text, deleting it, and pasting it back into Messages seems to reset something and usually will allow me to continue writing for a bit without the bug recurring.
As OP mentions, I noticed that Smart Quotes appears to be forced on in this version of Messages. Turning it off system-wide or in the app does NOT have any effect. Because the spurious chars that appear throughout longer messages are always curly quotes , it seems likely there's a connection here. My speculation is that this bug has something to do with text handling in Catalyst, since Big Sur is when (I think) Messages became a Catalyst app.
If anyone has a suggested fix for this issue, I'd love to hear it.
As fishcharlie describes, it generally crops up when typing/editing longer Messages. One or more characters throughout the text will be randomly replaced with single curly apostrophes or sometimes, curly quotation marks. In some cases, entire blocks of text are randomly moved, garbled, or deleted.
An interesting symptom: shortly before this bug occurs, red squiggly underlines (the kind used to indicate misspelled words) will pop-up randomly throughout the message. The underlined text is NOT misspelled and there's no clear pattern to which text will be affected. But when this spurious red underlining occurs, the text garbling and apostrophe/quote replacement is about to begin. Copying all of the text, deleting it, and pasting it back into Messages seems to reset something and usually will allow me to continue writing for a bit without the bug recurring.
As OP mentions, I noticed that Smart Quotes appears to be forced on in this version of Messages. Turning it off system-wide or in the app does NOT have any effect. Because the spurious chars that appear throughout longer messages are always curly quotes , it seems likely there's a connection here. My speculation is that this bug has something to do with text handling in Catalyst, since Big Sur is when (I think) Messages became a Catalyst app.
If anyone has a suggested fix for this issue, I'd love to hear it.
@Dan Berks
Would like to mention one more thing in regards to this. I'm aware of at least 2 other people who are having this issue as well. So it is not an isolated issue at all. It's almost impossible to reproduce when trying tho. I have tried multiple times to reproduce on demand so that I can file a Feedback Assistant radar with Apple and have been unsuccessful at reproducing when trying to. But it is a very common issue that occurs very often.
Sadly I don't have any fixes for it. But +1 to this if anyone else does.
Would like to mention one more thing in regards to this. I'm aware of at least 2 other people who are having this issue as well. So it is not an isolated issue at all. It's almost impossible to reproduce when trying tho. I have tried multiple times to reproduce on demand so that I can file a Feedback Assistant radar with Apple and have been unsuccessful at reproducing when trying to. But it is a very common issue that occurs very often.
Sadly I don't have any fixes for it. But +1 to this if anyone else does.
Yeah, I've been looking around because everything in Edit → Substitutions is not checked, yet they're all still acting as if they were :/
Edit: Seems like I might have accidentally stumbled upon a solution. I tried turning on Smart Quotes to see what it'd look like in the opposite state (shows as Off, toggled to On) then turned it back off. Noticed Smart Quotes were no longer applying. Tried the same with Emoji Replacement and it also works.
If there's something you don't want toggled on, try toggling it on then off again. It should actually be off now. Persists through a reboot, but not too sure about what'll happen when a macOS update hits.
Edit: Seems like I might have accidentally stumbled upon a solution. I tried turning on Smart Quotes to see what it'd look like in the opposite state (shows as Off, toggled to On) then turned it back off. Noticed Smart Quotes were no longer applying. Tried the same with Emoji Replacement and it also works.
If there's something you don't want toggled on, try toggling it on then off again. It should actually be off now. Persists through a reboot, but not too sure about what'll happen when a macOS update hits.
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Anybody have a fix for this yet? toggling the checkbox in System Prefs didn't do it for me either. (Big Sur, 11.2.3)
I'm in the same boat; I have smart quotes disabled globally in System Preferences and in Messages.app from Edit > Substitutions, with no effect. Messages appears to ignore the global preference, and the Substitutions menu appears to be totally broken (toggling the menu items does not actually cause the UserDefaults to change). I suspect this is a result of Messages being a Catalyst app, and will require Apple to fix the bugs in the framework (let them know! - https://www.apple.com/feedback/).
I did find a work-around, however - in System Preferences, you can click the dropdown menus beside "for Double Quotes" and "for Single Quotes", and change these to straight quotes (8th options). This effectively disables smart quotes in Messages. Note, however, that it doesn't stop messages from "smartly" substituting apostrophes inside works like I'm with their curly counterparts.
For those who are programmatically inclined, the equivalent `defaults` command is:
(and yes, it was a lot of fun trying to figure out how to escape those quotes...)
I did find a work-around, however - in System Preferences, you can click the dropdown menus beside "for Double Quotes" and "for Single Quotes", and change these to straight quotes (8th options). This effectively disables smart quotes in Messages. Note, however, that it doesn't stop messages from "smartly" substituting apostrophes inside works like I'm with their curly counterparts.
For those who are programmatically inclined, the equivalent `defaults` command is:
Code:
defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSUserQuotesArray -array "'\"'" "'\"'" "'" "'"@tree_frog: Not sure if this will fix my garbled text issue (see above) but it's worth a try. Just in case it produces unwanted side effects, could you please provide the appropriate defaults write command to reverse/undo the command you've provided? (Nice work on that, BTW. Looks like an escaping nightmare.)
@Dan Berks: The terminal command only changes the values of the two drop-down menus in System Preferences (the preference is stored as a 4-string array consisting of opening double quote, closing double quote, opening single quote, and closing single quote). You can completely revert it via the GUI.
As for the garbled text issue you're having, I don't think this will fix that, unfortunately. Incredibly frustrating.
As for the garbled text issue you're having, I don't think this will fix that, unfortunately. Incredibly frustrating.
Got it, thanks. I'll give it a try. Probably not related to my issue, but worth noting: 1) like others, I suffer from smart quote replacement being done despite having turned it off in the GUI and 2) my Messages issue (text garbled, deleted, moved) *always* includes random chunks of text being replaced by a curly quote. Can't help but think the two are related somehow.
Follow-up on the above: sadly, this did not fix my particular issue (Messages being garbled during editing, text moved and/or replaced with curly apostrophes.).
I believe this issue is tied specifically to iMessages, not "standard" SMS texts. Has anyone else been able to confirm if they have this issue with non-iMessage texts (the Green ones)? Thanks!
Also, just FYI: I found this article quite interesting: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8282075. It outlines many of the files that must be removed to "reset" your Message app on the Mac. I personally found 2 additional files as well (and there may well be others):
Also, just FYI: I found this article quite interesting: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8282075. It outlines many of the files that must be removed to "reset" your Message app on the Mac. I personally found 2 additional files as well (and there may well be others):
- com.apple.iChat.inputLine.plist
- com.apple.messages.text.plist
Chiming in to say that I've also been seeing smart quote substitution occur (absolutely all of the time) in Messages even when disabled in System Preferences (Keyboard > Text) and Messages (Edit > Substitutions > Smart Quotes).
I've also been occasionally seeing both arbitrary red underlining and arbitrary apostrophe-involved reordering/clobbering of text. Subjectively, this tends to occur after editing a long message extensively.
All of these unexpected behaviors came to my attention at the same time earlier this year, not long after upgrading to Big Sur.
I've also been occasionally seeing both arbitrary red underlining and arbitrary apostrophe-involved reordering/clobbering of text. Subjectively, this tends to occur after editing a long message extensively.
All of these unexpected behaviors came to my attention at the same time earlier this year, not long after upgrading to Big Sur.
Turning everything on (both in iMessage Edit > Substitutions) and in Keyboard System Preferences, closing out of iMessage, then turning everything back off and closing out of iMessage again did the trick for me! It wasn't just the stupid quotes, it was also autocompleting of ellipses (...). Thankfully all solved for me now. For those interested in plist too, here are my current values with all the substitutions no longer ocurring
Code:
$ defaults read com.apple.iChat.inputLine
{
inputLineSettingsKey = {
automaticDashSubstitutionEnabled = 0;
automaticDataDetectionEnabled = 0;
automaticEmojiSubstitutionEnabled = 0;
automaticLinkDetectionEnabled = 0;
automaticQuoteSubstitutionEnabled = 0;
automaticSpellingCorrectionEnabled = 0;
automaticTextReplacementEnabled = 0;
continuousSpellCheckingEnabled = 0;
grammarCheckingEnabled = 0;
smartInsertDeleteEnabled = 0;
};
}
$ defaults read com.apple.messages.text
{
EmojiReplacement = 1;
SmartDashes = 1;
SmartInsertDelete = 1;
SmartQuotes = 1;
}Good work, everyone!! There's now a solution. ?
@wpg4665 has pointed us in the right direction. The preference domain causing the issue is
My own notes:
Also, as @cwall1 points out, the bug appears to be isolated to iMessages (blue) or new messages (without recipient), and did not appear for SMS messages (green).
The fix:
To disable Smart Quotes in iMessages:
(Note that the preference value is inverted from what you might expect! The key name isn't very descriptive, and appears to take an integer value).
To re-enable Smart Quotes in iMessages:
(Or, to completely remove the underlying preference domain store for
@wpg4665 has pointed us in the right direction. The preference domain causing the issue is
com.apple.messages.text.My own notes:
com.apple.iChat.inputLine already existed on my machines, and the preference values made sense.com.apple.messages.text did NOT exist (and could be created with the convoluted GUI procedure described by @wpg4665, or more simply with the commands below).Also, as @cwall1 points out, the bug appears to be isolated to iMessages (blue) or new messages (without recipient), and did not appear for SMS messages (green).
The fix:
To disable Smart Quotes in iMessages:
defaults write com.apple.messages.text SmartQuotes -int 1(Note that the preference value is inverted from what you might expect! The key name isn't very descriptive, and appears to take an integer value).
To re-enable Smart Quotes in iMessages:
defaults delete com.apple.messages.text SmartQuotes(Or, to completely remove the underlying preference domain store for
com.apple.messages.text:defaults delete com.apple.messages.text; rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.messages.text.plist).
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Yeah no dice... I can't get mine to show all 0s like that, plus I already have:
set in
and
set in
...and every time I restart Messages, "smart" quote substitution has turned back on
while we're on the topic, does anyone know the command to replace the array at
automaticQuoteSubstitutionEnabled = 0;set in
com.apple.iChat.inputLineand
SmartQuotes = 1;set in
com.apple.messages.text...and every time I restart Messages, "smart" quote substitution has turned back on
while we're on the topic, does anyone know the command to replace the array at
com.apple.iChat.inputLine so that all the values are being set to 0?
I have this bug / issue on 12.3.1 still. I would bet this is related to iMessage being rewritten in Catalyst. Ever since that happened, iMessage has become somewhat of a steaming pile of ?
This isn't just really annoying, it's potentially dangerous: the other day I was sending Terminal commands to someone to execute and f--king iMessage was turning straight quotes into curly ones. We were both scratching our heads for a while until we figured out why everything was failing.
Has anyone checked if 12.4 fixes any of this?
This isn't just really annoying, it's potentially dangerous: the other day I was sending Terminal commands to someone to execute and f--king iMessage was turning straight quotes into curly ones. We were both scratching our heads for a while until we figured out why everything was failing.
Has anyone checked if 12.4 fixes any of this?
As I wrote above, you can fix the issue with your machine using the following Terminal command:
defaults write com.apple.messages.text SmartQuotes -int 1Whether Apple will restore the proper defaults remains to be seen.
I made a gist so this is now a 1-liner. See fix for iMessage text mangling
Code:
bash -c "$(curl -fsS https://gist.githubusercontent.com/luckman212/6bc9fd441f235ea0e4e9d19792bb5449/raw/b4d84853b484e5ded188f1f93f8067390f9a2244/imessage-i-mean-what-i-type.sh)"
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