As of version 21.4 RPA is supplied with updated version of Python - 3.7.9

This version of python is enforcing the use of utf-8 (while on previous versions we had python 3.5)

If you use the “Use Custom Encoding” option for the run script AC, it may cause issues with data processing:

In that case after the upgrade to 21.4 (from 19.5) there was no longer need to Use Custom Encoding.

Here are some of the listed improvements:

CPython implementation improvements:

• Avoiding the use of ASCII as a default text encoding:
• PEP 538, legacy C locale coercion
• PEP 540, forced UTF-8 runtime mode

For reference, here are the release notes for Python.