Help Lockscreen square characters Lollipop 5.0.1

[Rewted]

The lockscreen randomly displays squares instead of characters. This began to happen after Rogers Canada OTA Lollipop 5.0.1 upgrade on a Samsung Galaxy S4.

 

[SK4]

I am having the exact same issue. I turned my phone off and on, thinking it would resolve this issue and then I couldn't use my correct PIN at all. I did a hard reset and the square characters came back a few days after that, yet again. I had to resort to deleting my work email account from my phone (which was requiring the PIN protection) and then switching to a pattern unlock. It's only been 24 hours so I am not sure if the square characters will come back again--they were also appearing in my notifications, not just in the lock screen. If anyone else has a fix for this, I would be very grateful!

 

[luckysoul777]

I know this is an old thread, but I only just discovered a workaround better than reboot today. Reboot certainly works, but I hate to do it every 2-3 days.

If you are rooted, you can correct these funny characters on your lock screen by resetting systemui without reboot. There is an app on the Play Store called "Reset System UI".

Alternatively, if you are a Tasker user, do as follows to automate this process.
Create a task by going to
Code -> Run Shell -> under command type in "killall com.android.systemui" without the quotes of course and then check use root.

Then it's up to you to create a trigger to exercise this task at a time and situation least intrusive but also frequent enough so that you don't see these funny characters again.

Good luck!