Emoji separated by gray circles

Has anyone else seen this? It’s a new issue for me, maybe since iOS 18.1.


These are from last week. One messaging app looked normal but the other introduced gray circles spacing out the emoji.

I forget which apps were which, and I think it may be a moving target. Today, iMessage and Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp all look the same and have the gaps.

At first I thought some emoji were deleted. But comparing the two, you can see they are just spaced apart.

I tried disabling the emoji kbd and reenabling it, but the gaps are still there.

I did some googling, and people talked about clearing FB’s cache, but I can’t find that option, and this is not just a FB issue.

Also interesting the pattern of the gaps.

Thoughts??

iPhone 13, iOS 18.1: not seeing the gaps in iOS Messages. I don’t use Facebook, WhatsApp, or any other Meta products.

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