Dec 9, 2025

tl;dr: I ran into a Samsung virtual keyboard bug with Algolia Autocomplete library. I solved it the old way by searching GitHub issues. I came away convinced that wiring issues into AI assistants would be awesome!

Recently, I ran into a virtual keyboard bug while using Algolia’s Autocomplete ↗ library that was new to me: on Samsung phones, characters were disappearing while typing.

This is a known bug with a simple fix: set the enterKeyHint parameter to "search" when you instantiate Autocomplete.

Simple enough, yet I couldn’t get it solved by LLMs. I had to do it the old way, by searching the library’s GitHub issues. There I found this issue ↗

which points to this article ↗ on the Algolia support site that explains the problem:

I don’t mind digging through issue trackers, but I believe LLMs could have solved my problem if the library authors had used the following strategy:

Properly documenting that the enterKeyHint parameter was added to fix that Samsung virtual keyboard quirk. Right now, the docstring ↗ for enterKeyHint says: "The action label or icon to present for the enter key on virtual keyboards." It lists 7 possible values. This did not help me, and it did not help the LLM either.

1.

Feeding the Algolia AI assistant with Autocomplete’s GitHub issues. That way, LLMs could answer the common mistakes we make as developers when using new libraries. This would save a lot of time and greatly improve the developer experience. Here’s what I got using this prompt:

LLMs are not to blame for the lack of information they sometimes suffer from.

Let’s help them so they can help us.

That’s all I have for today! Talk soon 👋

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Prompt I used for Samsung virtual keyboard bug with Autocomplete library

I have one really annoying bug with Autocomplete
(https://github.com/algolia/autocomplete/) that breaks the whole
search experience.

It does not happen on my laptop.  It only happens on my mobile phone.  It
is a Samsung running Android.

1. When I type in the search bar, characters get removed.  For instance,
if I type "f" then "o", "f" gets removed, and only "o" stays in the
search input.
2. At first, I thought it was because I was typing fast.  But no, it
happens at any typing speed.
3. Then I thought it was because lunr might be slow with 1 or 2
characters, since there are too many matches.  But it is not due to
lunr, because we only call search when there are at least 3
characters.

Do you have any idea what is going on?  Is it a known bug of
autocomplete.js with Android?  What can I do to troubleshoot it?  Do you
have a fix for it?

It is weird that it works perfectly on my laptop.  I have no clue.

Download Autocomplete issues in JSON and Markdown formats

With ghapi

If you want to try the script yourself:

Add your GitHub token to the .env file:

GITHUB_TOKEN=...

Run the following commands:

$ uv init
$ uv add ghapi python-dotenv
$ uv run fetch_github_issues.py

The Autocomplete issues are saved:

in JSON in the file autocomplete-issues.json

in Mardown in the file autocomplete-issues.md

# fetch_github_issues.py
import json
import os
import logging
from dotenv import load_dotenv
from ghapi.all import GhApi, paged

logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO, format="%(levelname)s: %(message)s")

load_dotenv()

token = os.getenv("GITHUB_TOKEN")

owner = "algolia"
repo = "autocomplete"

api = GhApi(owner=owner, repo=repo, token=token)

# Fetch all issues (including pull requests)
issues_and_pull_requests = []
for page in paged(
api.issues.list_for_repo, owner=owner, repo=repo, state="all", per_page=100
):
issues_and_pull_requests.extend(page)

# Sort by issue number
issues_and_pull_requests = sorted(
issues_and_pull_requests, key=lambda issue: issue.number
)

issues = []

for issue in issues_and_pull_requests:
if getattr(issue, "pull_request", None) is not None:
continue

logging.info(issue.html_url)
issues.append(
{
"html_url": issue.html_url,
"title": issue.title,
"body": issue.body,
}
)

# Save issues in JSON format
with open("autocomplete-issues.json", "w", encoding="utf-8") as f:
json.dump(issues, f, ensure_ascii=False, indent=2)


# Save issues in Markdown format
def format_issue(issue):
title = issue["title"]
body = issue["body"]
url = issue["html_url"]
return f"# {title}\nSource: {url}\n\n{body}\n\n"


issues_md = "".join(map(format_issue, issues))

with open("autocomplete-issues.md", "w", encoding="utf-8") as f:
f.write(issues_md)

With pygithub

If you want to try the script yourself:

Add your GitHub token to the .env file:

GITHUB_TOKEN=...

Run the following commands:

$ uv init
$ uv add pygithub python-dotenv
$ uv run fetch_github_issues.py

The Autocomplete issues are saved:

in JSON in the file autocomplete-issues.json

in Mardown in the file autocomplete-issues.md

import json
import os
import logging
from dotenv import load_dotenv
from github import Github, Auth

logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO, format="%(levelname)s: %(message)s")

load_dotenv()

token = os.getenv("GITHUB_TOKEN")
gh = Github(auth=Auth.Token(token))
gh.get_user().login

repo = gh.get_repo("algolia/autocomplete")

# Fetch and sort all issues (including pull requests)
issues_and_pull_requests = sorted(
repo.get_issues(state="all"), key=lambda issue: issue.number
)

issues = []

for issue in issues_and_pull_requests:
if issue.pull_request is not None:
continue

logging.info(issue.html_url)
issues.append(
{
"html_url": issue.html_url,
"title": issue.title,
"body": issue.body,
}
)

# Save issues in JSON format
with open("autocomplete-issues.json", "w", encoding="utf-8") as f:
json.dump(issues, f, ensure_ascii=False, indent=2)


# Save issues in Markdown format
def format_issue(issue):
title = issue["title"]
body = issue["body"]
url = issue["html_url"]
return f"# {title}\nSource: {url}\n\n{body}\n\n"

issues_md = "".join(map(format_issue, issues))

with open("autocomplete-issues.md", "w", encoding="utf-8") as f:
f.write(issues_md)