Some Apple users have recently encountered an unusual bug: for some unknown reason, the preview of iMessage links for tweets is now missing characters on iOS, macOS, and watchOS.
Every time you send a URL to someone or a group in Apple’s Messages app, it generates a preview of that content. When the URL comes from Twitter, iMessage has a specific template that displays the tweet with a blue background without having to open it in the Twitter app.
Although the Twitter preview in iMessage is still working, it now hides the first and last characters of a tweet. Exactly when the bug started affecting users is unknown, but some staff at 9to5Mac have been noticing the issue since Thursday.
The cause of the error is unclear, but 9to5Mac believes it has something to do with a server-side issue – since these previews are generated online. In other words, there may be a problem with Twitter’s servers (or even iMessage’s), causing the preview to be corrupted. Fortunately, since this is likely a server-side bug, it should be fixed remotely in the next few hours (at least we hope).