When using special UTF-8 characters like äöüß (quite common in the german language, not sure if the problem is the same with œæå from scandinavian languages for example, but I suspect it to be the same), the Companion App Chat won’t show the chat message but displays an empty chat message instead. This is quite annoying on international group rides and frankly renders the companion app kind of useless when it comes to chatting.
If you find this annoying too, please vote this up, so Zwift Support will get on it.
I already submitted a ticket, but feel free to submit one as well.
This was tested on iPhone6s with iOS 13.2.2 and Companion App 3.9.0
This right here is a classic example of why people are ‘negative’. Thread dutifully reporting a fundamentally broken feature is approaching a year old with not even an acknowledgement from Zwift let alone a solution.
To be fair: Back in April I found myself riding with Jacob Fraser, Senior Manager Brand Experience, and talked to him about this, because with the massive influx of new riders due to Covid-19 I saw this as a more pressing issue than ever before. He gave me his personal contact information to get in touch if this issue was still unresolved. Which I then did.
He got back to me a few days later, reporting that his team is well aware of the issue, but it seems non-english characters have to be added manually to the font Zwift uses, so its a slow process. I submitted all missing UTF8-characters for the german language (öäüÖÜÜß) and urge everyone to do this for his or her own language. The more people get in touch with Zwift about this, the earlier this gets resolved. Vote this up as well, maybe it helps.
Ride on.
@Jacob: If you read this, I told you someone should write about this before it blows up in your face
Aside from the fact there’s precious little (or no) evidence that votes on here count for anything at all, you shouldn’t even have to appeal for community help. It’s a fundamental and discriminatory flaw in the app, that they should have fixed long ago.
Still not fixed then. And even things as mundane as pound signs in English don’t work between the app and in-game. Not to worry, maybe it’ll be fixed in another FOUR YEARS. Absolutely embarrassing.
Still not fixed. Very bad user experience for all non-English communication. Makes companion app chat almost worthless for other languages than English. PLEASE FIX IT.
Eric Min talked in the Zwiftcast about making it easier/better for new users. Not discriminating against them based on their language would be a reasonable start.
Unfortunately I gotta report that this is far from being closed, its german special chars only, nordic languages still not fully supported. Please make some noise in the last update notes…
