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Mazzlefizz Author

Level 1

8 points

iMessages to an iPhone occasionally appears with words cut off from end

When sending texts from iMessages to an iPhone, the text occasionally appears on their iPhone with a couple words cut off from the end. It appears fine in the iMessages display/history. Here's a few things I've noticed:

- It's repeatable. For example, the following message always causes the issue: "man, why are you here? Two are in testing places". On the iPhone it appears as "man, why are you here? Two are in testing".

- It's a problem with iMessages. If I send the exact same text from the iPhone, it goes through just fine. The message has to originate from MacOS iMessages. (I'm using the latest Mountain Lion and all updates as of 12/21/12)

- The full message is actually being successfully transferred to the phone; it just does not display correctly. There are two pieces of evidence for this. If on the iPhone, the user copies the truncated message and pastes it somewhere else, the full message is pasted! Moreover, on the top level the messages app (where you see the last message from all the recent people you texted with), the full message displays.

- It can happen with both short and longer messages. Here's another longer message I noticed got cut off: "That's funny that you though I was joking when I said I was debugging. Why is that so weird?"

- It has something to do with the length of the message or how it is being wrapped. I can create modifications of those texts with the same length, and they will cut off. (That said, some modifications will not cause the problem, so it's more than just length. Maybe it has something to do with how it wraps the words?) Usually adding a few words to the message will allow it to go through.

- It always cuts off at a space. In other words, it will not truncate something in the middle of a word.

- I have only seen it cut off one or two words before.

Apple really needs to make this a high priority fix. Unreliable messaging of this sort is a deal-breaker for iMessages, IMO. My guess is that they haven't had more reports for this because people simply don't notice unless the last word or two totally ruins the meaning of a text and the other person points it out.

Can people try to recreate this on their machines? If so, please do so and file a bug report (http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html). All you have to do is get on your iMessage app and text one of those two messages to your phone. If it appears truncated on your phone, you've confirmed it. You're welcome to use any of my post in any bug report.

iMessage-OTHER, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Dec 21, 2012 6:54 PM

25 replies

Eric D.

Level 2

210 points

Dec 24, 2012 7:12 AM in response to Mazzlefizz

Thanks for all the detailed analysis. This truncation problem happens to me daily and it's very hard to know when it will occur. I literally have to keep my iPhone next to the computer to read each message I send to make sure it didn't get truncated. Very frustrating bug. It's part of a long list of bugs that Apple seems to be slow responding to:

1. Truncated messages sent from Mac to iPhone

2. iMessages out of time sync on Mac, iPad

3. Delivery status varies (shows undelivered on iPad but delivered on Mac)

4. Picture icons only pull from local Address Book files, not FaceBook pictures unless manually synced.

5. Limited Emoji support from within iMessages on Mac

6. No Camera button to take or add pictures to iMessages on Mac client

Those are just a few off the top of my head. I hope we see some fixes soon.

Mazzlefizz Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 25, 2012 11:45 AM in response to Ralph-Johns-UK

I'm impressed you actually looked at the file, Ralph! 🙂 That said, it's possible that you can't properly see the differences using QuickLook. I don't think it will show the underlying representation of the characters or the related fields in the database that may have other information. It might make more sense to check out sms.db out in a hex editor and a database program. Your initiative motivated me to do both 😉

In the hex editor, I did indeed see a difference in the 'text' field when showing hidden characters. For the problem text "That's funny that you though I was joking when I said I was debugging. Why is that so weird?", some entries had ¬†¬† (tabs probably) after the initial period, while others had spaces. And that wasn't the only difference. In the database program, I also noticed that some of the entries had a slightly different 'attributedBody" field, which the iPhone wiki theorizes contains some sort of meta-data in it. I'm not sure which one of these differences is the important one, but there definitely is a difference.

Anyway, at this point we're probably not going to be able to get more out of this. Hopefully this thread will encourage more people to file a detailed bug report when they see that's it's a repeatable and real issue, not something that just happens sporadically for no perceptible reason. 🙂

Mazzlefizz Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 25, 2012 2:30 PM in response to Ralph-Johns-UK

It's a sqlite database, so you'll see exactly what all of those things are, if you just open it up in a db program. I wouldn't try to parse the raw data too much. 🙂 The only thing that you might miss when looking at in a database program is the tab versus space thing or any other hidden or non-printing characters.

I'm not sure how up to date this is, but here's an explanation of the various tables/columns you'll find in the database: http://theiphonewiki.com/wiki/IMessage

Mazzlefizz Author

Level 1

8 points

Apr 26, 2013 5:41 PM in response to JohnBradshaw

It was fixed in one of the iOS updates since this post. (6.1?)

That said, I think they fixed it on the phone side but not on the sender side. So, if you send a message from your mac to an iPhone that doesn't have an updated iOS, the message might still be truncated. I could be wrong, though. To be honest, nobody has told me that they've gotten a truncated message in quite some time. Maybe they fixed it on the mac side too now or perhaps everyone I know has updated their iOS.

Mazzlefizz Author

Level 1

8 points

Apr 27, 2013 9:30 AM in response to Eric D.

Nice find, Eric. And, you're right. The bug is still there, even with the latest iOS. It just seems to be slightly different. Here's a message that still will truncate (from that thread):

The best prize is a surprise "

Make sure you have the extra return and space at the end, i.e.

"<return>

The best prize is a surprise<space>"

The people in that thread have made a few good observations that agrees with our previous assessment that it is a wrapping issue. I do wonder why the old messages that used to get truncated aren't any more...

Apr 28, 2013 2:46 AM in response to Mazzlefizz

I could not repeat the bug when the iPhone 5 language was set to Finnish.

But if I switch the language to English, then the last word of certain phrases is dropped off.

For example, I send the following iMessage (without quotation marks, notice the trailing space at the end) from iPhone 5 (iOS 6.1.3). If the iPhone is set to Finnish, it displays OK in the sent blue bubble. But if I switch to English, then the last word is not displayed (I can copy the whole text from the bubble, though):

"I could be the next Obama "

Apr 2, 2017 6:24 AM in response to Mazzlefizz

This happens to me, often when I change the font, whether I change the size or turn on "bold font". But it fixes if I re open the app. The only real problem occurs mostly when I choose the smallest font size, with bold font turned on. Even restarting the phone and the app doesn't fix it. Occasionally I change it to the small setting with bold font on and for some reason it will decide to work and I don't know why...

Sep 24, 2017 9:19 PM in response to Mazzlefizz

This happens to me some what. It’s always when it’s set to the smallest font size and Bold Text is turned on. And it always does one of two things:

1. Cuts of the end of every text I’ve sent or received, and every future text I send.

2. Cuts of the end of every text I’ve sent or received, but doesn’t cut off any new messages I’ve sent or received after changing the font.

It’s really annoying because I like having the bold font. It looks nice.

EDIT: just wanted to mention It happened to me on iOS 10, and still happens on iOS 11. Also whoops, just noticed I already commented on this a while back

ffaubert

Level 1

5 points

Dec 22, 2012 5:30 AM in response to Mazzlefizz

This happens to me all of the time as well. I can confirm that your first test case is reproducable on my hardware as well.

Apr 26, 2013 3:56 PM in response to Mazzlefizz

I'm unable to replicate this issue. Using an iPhone 4S with iOS 6.1.3 on AT&T in the US.

iMessages to an iPhone occasionally appears with words cut off from end