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Comment by RobotToaster | Hacker News Reader

> how would you test if all existing passcodes remain inputable without knowing the passcodes of all iPhone users?

You basically can't ever remove an available character.

That includes emojis if they're allowed in IOS passwords.

Probably the better solution is to include some kind of special lock-screen keyboard that provides some fallback mechanism to input any character. Presumably there are similar edge cases where someone creates a password using one keyboard, then switches keyboard layout, and now can't re-enter it using the active layout...

Indeed. For example, most desktop operating systems have a keybinding for «search for any Unicode symbol by name and input it». That would make sense to have as a fallback button on a virtual keyboard too.

The iOS emoji selector is close in UI/UX already, but the search is restricted to the emoji range of Unicode.

Wonder if you can get it to enter effective. Power لُلُصّبُلُلصّبُررً ॣ ॣh ॣ ॣ 冗

You can but you have to tie it to actual devices and a point in time, not simply a specific OS version. Essentially, all devices that existed before the change must still support the old set of characters and devices produced (or sold or activated) afterwards can support the reduced set.

Or wait until a future OS version that will not support any device currently in existence.

This fails if they let you keep your password migrating between devices, though, so you probably need a version somewhere in the middle that flags it as an issue and flags it as not allowing migration without changing the passphrase.

Yeah, they could force a password update at some point to ensure passwords meet the new requirements.

You need to not just force the update, but also forbid using pre-updated ones in migration, since someone might conceivably have an off-for-many-years device they wake up and want to migrate.

The long tail of stupid edge cases is very long indeed.

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