Some people have reported that their keyboard extensions have disappeared in iOS 17.
When this happens, the keyboard no longer shows up in System Settings or the keyboard switcher. The app can still detect the keyboard, but it doesn’t show up anywhere in iOS.
The problem happens for keyboard extensions with a bundle ID that starts with se. on iOS 17.2 and 17.3.1. I haven’t tested on iOS 17.1 yet.
Bundle ID
The problem only seems to affect a small number of apps, and all investigated so far have had a bundle identifier that started with se. (Swedish top domain)
To investigate this, I created some test apps where bundle ID was the only difference, then added a custom keyboard extension to each app. This was the result:
- ✅ Bundle ID starts with com. - the keyboard shows up.
- ✅ Bundle ID starts with eu. - the keyboard shows up.
- 🚨 Bundle ID starts with se. - the keyboard doesn’t show up.
- ✅ Bundle ID starts with de. - the keyboard shows up.
- ✅ Bundle ID starts with da. - the keyboard shows up.
- ✅ Bundle ID starts with dk. - the keyboard shows up.
The com. prefix is by far the most common bundle ID prefix, while eu. is used within the European Union. This problem would have been more severe if it affected those IDs too.
The se. prefix is the Swedish top domain, so some Swedish companies use it in their ID. I was made aware of this problem from a Swedish company.
I have created many se. test apps to investigate, and not once did the keyboard appear. If I changed the ID to start with com. or eu., the keyboard appeared.
Locale?
Since se is both the Swedish top domain, as well as the Swedish locale identifier’s region code, I first suspected that the problem could be locale-related.
I therefore tried changing the prefix from se. to de. (German) as well as da. and dk. (Denmark), but the keyboard worked perfectly for all these cases.
So far, I’ve only seen this problem with apps that have a bundle ID that starts with se..
Affected platforms
As I investigated this problem, I noticed it on devices that used iOS 17.2. Upgrading to iOS 17.3.1 didn’t solve it. I haven’t tested on iOS 17.1, but will try to find such a device.
The problem hasn’t appeared for me on iOS 15, nor on iOS 17.0. I’m currently updating an iOS 17.0 device to 17.3.1 to see if it starts appearing then.
Conclusion
The problem seems to be related to the bundle ID, but I’ve only seen it with apps that have a bundle ID that starts with se..
I have reported this to the Apple Feedback Assistant (FB13611131), and will probably use a support ticket if I can't find a way to solve this.
The problem is extra severe since it's bundle ID-related. Since we can't change the bundle ID of an app, I don't know how to fix it.
