How to tame (and improve) the iphone’s autocorrect feature

Benj Edwards
Benj Edwards
Associate Editor

Benj Edwards is an Associate Editor for How-To Geek. For over 15 years, he has written about technology and tech history for sites such as The Atlantic, Fast Company, PCMag, PCWorld, Macworld, Ars Technica, and Wired. In 2005, he created Vintage Computing and Gaming, a blog devoted to tech history. He also created The Culture of Tech podcast and regularly contributes to the Retronauts retrogaming podcast. Read more.

Are you tired of your iPhone or iPad “fixing” typos when they’re actually correct words, names, places, or terms? Then you should consider turning off auto-correct, which is an easy fix in Settings. Here’s how to do it.

Why Does Auto-Correct Feel So Frustrating?

When your iPhone or iPad corrects a word automatically, it’s drawing on both a dictionary and a predictive text algorithm that learns from how you type. The dictionary may not include every proper name, acronym, or new term as it appears on the scene, so it can be frustrating when auto-correct changes what you know is correct. Also, if you misspell a certain word frequently enough, the predictive text algorithm will learn that typo, and it may begin “fixing” correct instances of a word or term when you don’t want it to.

There are some advanced remedies for auto-correction woes, such as attempting to retrain the algorithm or adding custom shortcuts, but sometimes the easiest way to deal with auto-correct is to turn it off completely. Here’s how.

How to Disable Auto-Correction on iPhone and iPad.

First, open the “Settings” app on your iPhone or iPad. The following screens are from an iPhone, but the iPad steps are nearly identical with only slight layout variations.

In Settings, navigate to “General.”

In General, tap “Keyboard.”

In Keyboard settings, scroll down to the “All Keyboards” sections. Tap the switch beside “Auto-Correction” to turn it off.

After that, all of your typos will come through without interference. But don’t worry—no one will know you turned if off, so you can still blame auto-correct for your embarrassing social media gaffes. Have fun!

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Benj Edwards
Benj Edwards is an Associate Editor for How-To Geek. For over 15 years, he has written about technology and tech history for sites such as The Atlantic, Fast Company, PCMag, PCWorld, Macworld, Ars Technica, and Wired. In 2005, he created Vintage Computing and Gaming, a blog devoted to tech history. He also created The Culture of Tech podcast and regularly contributes to the Retronauts retrogaming podcast.
Read Full Bio »

Automatically check spelling, set up automatic text replacements, add words to the spelling dictionary, and more on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac.

Set up auto-correction

Turn on auto-correction on your device:

• On iPhone or iPad, open a document in Pages, Numbers, or Keynote, tap the More button , tap Settings, then tap Auto-Correction.
• On Mac, in Pages, Numbers, or Keynote choose [app name] > Preferences from the menu bar, then choose Auto-Correction.

Use the auto-correction settings to customize how Pages, Numbers, and Keynote handle spelling and formatting by selecting and deselecting the available options. These options include:

• Detecting lists
• Detecting web and email links
• Detecting phone links
• Applying link styles
• Applying superscript to number suffixes
• Formatting fractions
• Using smart quotes and smart dashes, which replaces single and double quotes with curly quotes or your chosen quote style and automatically converts double hyphens to dashes (Mac only)

If you are using iCloud Keychain, each app’s settings are shared across all your Apple products signed into your iCloud account.

Some options might also be available in other menus within iWork. If you change a setting in another menu, it changes your auto-correction settings too. Some iWork settings are similar to other settings on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. In most cases, the settings you choose in Pages, Numbers, or Keynote override the system setting on your device.

Set up custom text replacements

With text replacement, you can use shortcuts to replace longer phrases. When you type the shortcut in your document, the phrase automatically replaces it.

In the auto-correction settings for Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, you can set up text replacement specifically for use within each app.

Set up custom text replacements on iPhone or iPad

1. With a document open, tap the More button .
2. Tap Settings.
3. Tap Auto-Correction.
4. Make sure Text Replacement is turned on, then tap Replacements List.
5. Tap the Add button .
   • For Phrase, enter what you want the app to change the text to (for example, "©").
   • For Shortcut, enter the text you want to use to prompt the replacement (for example, "(c)").

If you used this example, every time you type "(c)" in Pages, Numbers, or Keynote, the app changes it to "©."

Set up custom text replacements on Mac

1. Open the auto-correction settings.
2. Under Replacement, make sure "Symbol and text substitution" is selected, then click the add button .
   • Under Replace, enter the text you want to use to prompt the replacement (for example, "(c)").
   • Under With, enter what you want the app to change the text to (for example, "©").

If you used this example, every time you type "(c)" in Pages, Numbers, or Keynote, the app changes it to "©."

Undo text replacement

If Pages, Numbers, or Keynote replaces the text, and you want to restore it to the way you typed it in, press Command-Z on your keyboard or tap the Undo button .

Use auto-correction with other languages

Auto-correction is available for languages that your Mac is set up to spell check. To see these languages, go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Text and click the Spelling pop-up menu. Click "Set Up" to learn how to add spelling dictionaries for additional languages. On iPhone or iPad, auto-correction is not available for all languages.

Add words to the spelling dictionary

When Pages, Numbers, or Keynote detects a word it doesn’t recognize, it underlines the word with a dotted red line. You can add the word to the dictionary on your device used by iWork and other apps so that it recognizes the word and includes it in spell check:

• On iPad or iPhone, tap the underlined word, then tap Learn Spelling (you may need to tap Replace first).
• On Mac, Control-click the word, then choose Learn Spelling.

In Pages, Numbers, or Keynote on Mac, you can also choose Ignore Spelling if you no longer want that app to mark this word as misspelled. To add, edit, or remove the words in your iWork app’s Ignored Words list, choose Pages > Preferences, choose Auto-Correction, then click Ignored Words. Click the add button (+) or the remove button (-) to add or remove words. Or click on a word to edit its spelling.

If spell check and auto-correction aren’t working

If your iPad is managed by an organization such as your school, features like spell check, auto-correction, and text replacement might be turned off. Learn more about restricting keyboard and dictionary functions.

A new patent hints that Apple is working on ways to fix one of the most annoying things of the iPhone — autocorrect. Future iOS keyboard may predict misspelled words, and delete those words on the fly with very little user intervention.

iOS’s keyboard has been the same for quite a while now, well mostly. It has gained a few features here and there, like Slide to Type with iOS 14, shrinking keyboard with iOS 13, but it has mostly been the same. A patent granted to Apple today will further improve the iOS keyboard by quickly removing the mistyped part of the word.

This is how the feature is supposed to work: let’s say you mistype a word in a sentence. Instead of deleting the whole word, like iOS currently does when you hit backspace, the keyboard will identify where the mistyping started, and then delete only the part where the error started from.

For e.g., you type a message “This is a test of new keybiard.” iOS will automatically detect that there was an error in typing the word ‘keyboard’, and now even without you having to tap the delete key, the input box will change to “This is a test of new keyb” waiting for you to do the correction and complete the sentence.

“After a user inputs a sequence of characters, an error may be identified being in the middle of the sequence of characters. Currently, a user can correct the entire sequence of characters via an auto-correction function, which sometimes fails to provide replacement words that accurately reflect what the user intends to input.

What is needed in the art are methods and systems that allows a user to efficiently delete characters corresponding to an input error and restart/continue inputting characters.”

The patent describes approaches such as decision trees and other artificial intelligence algorithms for this to work. The feature would rely on your iPhone’s neural engine to do the calculations, as the patent describes. The feature does sound pretty good and might fix the annoying autocorrect we’ve been living with for years.

How has your experience been with your iPhone’s keyboard? Do you use the stock keyboard on your iPhone, or do you rely on third-party keyboards? What do you think about the feature discussed in this patent? Let us know in the comments section below!

CLOSE

Stop texting 'misunderstandings' with just a couple tricks.

Here are the steps to improve iOS autocorrect. (Photo: Ridofranz, Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Oh, autocorrect! Sometimes, you’re so handy. You see the word “brain” and know I meant “Brian.” You instantly switch letters around, turning nonsense into coherent words. You complete me ­– or, more accurately, you complete my sentences.

So why do you have to drive me so crazy? Why do you take the words I intended to type and completely rearrange them? Why must you always turn “Missy” into “Mossy,” or “so” into “do,” or “well” into “we’ll”? Why can’t you just accept the things I type into that tiny keyboard, except when I obviously intended something else?

Tip in a Tip: If you really want to take control of your iPhone, click here for power tips you’ll wish you’d known from Day One.

Most autocorrect errors are funny, like a digital Mad Libs. But sometimes we send messages without realizing how embarrassing they are.

Here’s the good news: You actually have a lot of power over the autocorrect feature on your iOS Phone.

After all, your phone is trying to learn from you. There are several tactics you can use to prevent misunderstandings in the future, and I guarantee that any of them will work wonders.

Turn off autocorrect

Yes, you can just turn it off. Autocorrect may seem like a permanent fixture, but you can actually disable it whenever you like. No more bad guesses. No more awkward miscommunications. You simply type what you mean, letter by letter, and if something is misspelled, so be it.

Turning it off is pretty simple. Just tap Settings >> General >> Keyboard, then toggle Auto-Correction to Off. Follow the same steps to turn autocorrect back on whenever you need it again.

Reset your keyboard dictionary

Deep inside your phone, there is a tiny dictionary. This verbal database determines whether your words are spelled correctly, and everything you type is checked against this list. But the more you use your phone, the more you may accidentally save words to the dictionary that aren’t correct. Over time, these misspellings can add up, meaning more frustration for you.

Luckily, you can essentially “reboot” your keyboard’s dictionary. Just go to Settings >> General >> Reset, then Reset Keyboard Dictionary. Once you’ve done this, your dictionary is a clean slate, the same as when you first bought your phone. Now you can begin “training” your autocorrect to respond to your preferences, and all of those misspelled words will have magically been erased.

Train autocorrect as you go

When you misspell a word in iOS, autocorrect usually jumps in with the correct spelling. It can also fill in words it recognizes before you fully type them. Just hit the spacebar or tap your finger on the word to accept the autocorrect suggestion.

But this can also be frustrating. You’ve probably done this a thousand times: iOS guesses the wrong word, over and over. By the time you’ve typed the full word “marginal,” iOS has already guessed “My,” “Maybe,” “Man,” “Mary,” “Maria,” “Math,” “Marge,” “Margi,” “Margo,” “Margin,” “Margins,” “Marginally,” and “Marginalized.” If you hit one of these guesses by accident, you have to delete letters and go back.

Meanwhile, iOS may think it’s guessing correctly, especially if you accidently press the spacebar. This will cause autocorrect to learn from a mistake, which could cause problems later on.

To counter this, start typing your word, and when autocorrect guesses the wrong word, tap the X in the autocorrect bubble and override the suggestion. This slows you down a little at first, but iOS will learn your preferences very quickly and will stop suggesting it.

Text replacement

If you’re feeling ambitious, you can program your phone to replace one phrase with another. These shortcuts can be very handy and save you a lot of typing time.

Here’s a typical example: You want to say “on my way,” but instead you type “OMW.” With one little trick, your phone can automatically turn “OMW” into “One my way.” Or you could turn “BRB” into “Be right back,” or “1234” into “Four Score and Seven Years Ago.” Anything you feel like.

Here’s what you do: Go to Settings >> General >> Keyboard >> Text Replacement >> Tap the + sign. Here, you add the complete sentence to the Phrase field, in this case “On my way.” In the Shortcut field, you put “OMW.”

But there’s also the flip side: If leave the Shortcut field blank, then autocorrect will stop trying to correct the spelling of that word or phrase. From now on, you can type that word and autocorrect should theoretically ignore it.

Turn off predictive text

This screen shot shows the predictive keyboard available with Apple's iOS 8 software update. (Photo: AP)

As you type, you’ll notice words popping up between the keyboard and the text. This feature is called “predictive text,” because your phone is trying to guess the next word you want to type. Because your phone learns from your vocabulary, predictive text should become more accurate as time goes on.

But the opposite is also true: When you make mistakes, predictive text starts guessing incorrectly, because it is using incorrect data to anticipate your word-choice. One nice thing about predictive text is that you can easily toggle while typing to turn it on and off.

Here’s how you do it: Open the Messenger app, press and hold the keyboard button (where you enable your emojis) and toggle on (or off) the “Predictive” option.

Alternatively, in iOS 10, got to Settings >> General >> Keyboard >> then toggle the “Predictive” option to Off.

What other bad smart phone habits can you tame? Be sure to listen or download my podcasts, or click here to find it on your local radio station. You can listen to the Kim Komando Show on your phone, tablet or computer. From buying advice to digital life issues, click here for my free podcasts.

The iPhone automatically enables autocorrect on its keyboards, which means it'll automatically fix a typo like "adn" to "and" if you're typing quickly and misspell a word. It's convenient most of the time, but it can get awfully annoying when it autocorrects common words.

There are two fixes: Turning off autocorrect entirely, or applying a list of words into the "text replacement" field on your iPhone. The latter creates a shortcut for words or phrases you type frequently. If you type "omw," for example, the phone will automatically spell out "On my way!"

Here's how to do both.

How to turn off autocorrect completely

Take note: This means your iPhone won't autocorrect any typos you make, so you might see your number of mistakes increase. To turn off autocorrect:

• Open Settings on your iPhone
• Tap General
• Tap Keyboard
• Toggle the option for "Auto-Correction" so that it's off.

How to adjust autocorrect manually:

This option lets you replace words that you type with others. If, for example, you want to replace "ducking" with a naughtier word, you can do that here:

• Open Settings on your iPhone
• Tap General
• Tap Keyboard
• Choose "Text Replacement"
• Tap the + button in the top-right corner

Here, to be appropriate, we'll create the phrase "be right there" and use the shortcut "brt." This lets you type "brt" and automatically expand that into "be right there" when you're sending a text message or e-mail.

You could also make "ducking" the shortcut and change the phrase to the word you're probably actually trying to type. This means every time your phone thinks you type "ducking" it'll put the other word in its place.

That's it. Create as many text replacement phrases as you want, especially if you want to turn off autocorrect altogether and use this list to replace typos you know you frequently make.

Oh, autocorrect! Sometimes you’re so handy. You see the word “brain” and you know I meant “Brian.” You instantly switch letters around, turning nonsense into coherent words. You complete me – or, more accurately, you complete my sentences.

So why do you have to drive me crazy? Why do you take the words I intend to type and completely rearrange them? Why must you always turn “Missy” into “Mossy,” or “so” into “do,” or “well” into “we’ll”? Why can’t you just accept the things I type into that tiny keyboard, except when I obviously intend something else?

Tip in a Tip: If you really want to take control of your iPhone, click here for power tips you’ll wish you’d known from Day One.

Most autocorrect errors are funny, like a digital Mad Libs. But sometimes we send messages without realizing how embarrassing they are.

Here’s the good news: You actually have a lot of power over the autocorrect feature on your iOS device.

After all, your iPhone and iPad are trying to learn from you. There are several tactics you can use to prevent misunderstandings, and I guarantee that any of them will work wonders.

Turn off autocorrect

Yes, you can just turn it off. Autocorrect may seem like a permanent fixture, but you can actually disable it whenever you like. No more bad guesses. No more awkward miscommunications. You simply type what you mean, letter by letter, and if something is misspelled, so be it.

Just tap Settings >> General >> Keyboard, then toggle Auto-Correction to Off. Follow the same steps to turn it back on if you need it again.

Reset your keyboard dictionary

Deep inside your phone, there is a tiny dictionary, a verbal database that determines whether your words are spelled correctly. Everything you type is checked against this list. But the more you use your phone, the more you may accidentally save words to the dictionary that aren’t correct. Over time, these misspellings can add up, meaning more frustration for you.

More on this.

Luckily, you can essentially “reboot” your keyboard’s dictionary. Just go to Settings >> General >> Reset, then Reset Keyboard Dictionary. Once you’ve done this, your dictionary is a clean slate, the same as when you bought your phone. Now you can begin

“training” autocorrect to respond to your preferences, and all of those misspelled words will have magically been erased.

Train autocorrect as you go

When you misspell a word in iOS, autocorrect usually jumps in with the correct spelling. It can also fill in words it recognizes before you fully type them. Just hit the spacebar or tap your finger on the word to accept the autocorrect suggestion.

But this can also be frustrating. You’ve probably done this a thousand times: iOS guesses the wrong word, over and over. By the time you’ve typed the full word “marginal,” iOS has already guessed “My,” “Maybe,” “Man,” “Mary,” “Maria,” “Math,” “Marge,” “Margi,” “Margo,” “Margin,” “Margins,” “Marginally” and “Marginalized.” If you hit one of these guesses by accident, you have to delete letters and go back.

Meanwhile, iOS may think it’s guessing correctly, especially if you accidently press the spacebar. This will cause autocorrect to learn from a mistake, which could cause problems later on.

To counter this, start typing your word, and when autocorrect guesses the wrong word, tap the X in the autocorrect bubble and override the suggestion. This slows you down a little at first, but iOS will learn your preferences very quickly and will stop suggesting it.

Text replacement

If you’re feeling ambitious, you can program your phone to replace one phrase with another. These shortcuts can be very handy and save you a lot of typing time.

Here’s a typical example: You want to say, “On my way,” but instead you type “OMW.” With one little trick, your phone can automatically turn “OMW” into “On my way.” Or you could turn “BRB” into “Be right back,” or “1234” into “Four Score and Seven Years Ago.” Anything you feel like.

Here’s what you do: Go to Settings >> General >> Keyboard >> Text Replacement >> Tap the + sign. Here, you add the complete sentence to the Phrase field — in this case, “On my way.” In the Shortcut field, you put “OMW.”

But there’s also the flip side: If you leave the Shortcut field blank, autocorrect will stop trying to correct the spelling of that word or phrase. From now on, you can type that word and autocorrect will theoretically ignore it.

Turn off predictive text

As you type, you’ll notice words popping up between the keyboard and the text. This feature is called “predictive text,” because your phone is trying to guess the next word you want to type. Because your phone learns from your vocabulary, predictive text should become more accurate as time goes on.

But the opposite is also true: When you make mistakes, predictive text starts guessing incorrectly, because it is using incorrect data to anticipate your word-choice.

One nice thing about predictive text is that you can easily toggle while typing to turn it on and off.

Here’s how you do it: Open the Messenger app, press and hold the keyboard button (where you enable your emojis) and toggle on (or off) the “Predictive” option.

Alternatively, in iOS 10, got to Settings >> General >> Keyboard >> then toggle the “Predictive” option to Off.

What other bad smart phone habits can you tame? Be sure to listen to or download my podcasts, or click here to find them on your local radio station. You can listen to the Kim Komando Show on your phone, tablet or computer. From buying advice to digital life issues, click here for my free podcasts.

Even if you’ve never experienced a full-on, mortifying ‘Damn you, autocorrect!’ moment, you’ve probably still had irritations with the system on your iPad. We happen to think it’s quite good, but even if you opt to switch off the Predictive engine it’s still useful to know how to manage autocorrect.

The first thing to remember is that you can cancel corrections either as they’re happening or just after. When you’re typing a word, and the autocorrect thinks it should be something else, it will highlight the word and suggest the new one in the middle of the QuickType bar.

Tap the option in quote marks to keep what you’ve typed. If you realise it’s corrected a word after typing, just tap backspace to delete into the word and retype – autocorrect won’t kick in again unless you drastically change the word.

When you fix autocorrect’s changes, the dictionary learns your new words, so it won’t bug you for corrections next time. You can turn autocorrect off in Settings > General > Keyboard; and if you feel you’d be better off starting over with the system afresh, you can simply reset your autocorrect dictionary in Settings > General > Reset > Reset Keyboard Dictionary.

1. Teach TextExpander

There’s a great but little-used feature in iOS called TextExpander, which enables you to set ‘shortcuts’ for longer messages – Apple’s example is that you can just type ‘omw’ and it autocorrects to ‘On my way’.

This system ties into the general autocorrect system, so we can use it to make some cunning tweaks. To begin, tap Settings > General > Keyboard > Shortcuts.

2. Specific replacements

If you’ve accidentally made autocorrect learn a common mistake that it should be correcting (such as ‘youre’), you can fix it with TextExpander. Tap the + sign (top right), and in the Phrase field, enter the correct word.

In the Shortcut field, type in the one that you got wrong before. Tap Save, and now when you write the latter, it changes to the former.

3. Manually add words

If you want to add words to autocorrect’s library in advance, use TextExpander. Add a new shortcut, and type the word you want into the Phrase field, with capitalisation as you want it.

Don’t put anything in the Shortcut field. Save this, and the word is effectively added to your autocorrect dictionary. To remove an entry in the shortcuts list, swipe it to the left and tap Delete.

While the iPhone 13 is guaranteed to launch with software upgrades thanks to iOS 15, there’s one rumored improvement in particular that would make Apple’s smartphone much less aggravating.

According to a recently-awarded patent, Apple is working on making autocorrect more intelligent. The patent’s proposes a version of autocorrect that can fix fragments of words, as well as move your cursor automatically to where you made an identified error. This would make it easier to re-write the word or phrase you got wrong the first time.

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Apple filed the patent, spotted by PhoneArena, back in 2017. Earlier this month, the USPTO awarded the Cupertino-based company protection over the autocorrect enhancements.

The iPhone’s autocorrect feature has long caused frustrations (and a few laughs) by fixing phrases or words incorrectly. Sometimes autocorrect changes a word that the user spelled the right way, too.

Over time, the iPhone’s keyboard becomes a bit more intuitive, recognizing the words or proper nouns you use often. You also have the option to bypass autocorrect for certain phrases, or disable autocorrect altogether in the keyboard section of your settings app.

If Apple were to introduce the cursor-moving feature detailed in the patent, it could provide another alternative to autocorrect. That said, the feature seems like it could be more annoying than the autocorrect we know has ever been.

I’m not sure I’d want my iPhone automatically moving my text cursor for me, even if I had made a mistake. Most of my iPhone typing pertains to shorter messages, which aren’t worth going to back to fix for one false word. In that case, I’d rather follow up the message with a correction or just retype the message from the beginning.

But I’ll also argue that any update to autocorrect could improve the feature’s intelligence, causing fewer incorrect corrections. Of course, this is a patent we’re talking about, so there’s no promise we’ll see its contents come to fruition. Apple protects hundreds of ideas and projects that never see the light of day.

We’ll learn about any upcoming keyboard improvements when the company reveals iOS 15 at WWDC 2021, which is taking place virtually in June.

Back in December 2008, I came up with an “interesting” solution to iOS’s annoying habit of “correcting” the word that I wanted with the word that it thought I wanted. The problem was colloquially known as the “Ducking iPhone” for reasons you are probably smart enough to figure out on your own. (If you’re confused, here’s the PG–13 version, or, for the more sensitive types, TUAW also has a PG-rated version.)

The solution was simple: Create a new contact in your iOS address book, using the word you want iOS to learn as the first or last name. The good news is iOS is much better about learning words (tap the ‘x’ which appears when the auto-correct option appears), but a Twitter search of ‘ducking iPhone’ shows that many people are still running into this problem.

If you would rather not add contacts to your address book, there is another option now which did not exist in 2008. On your iOS device, go to Settings » General » Keyboard » Shortcuts. Tap the + on the top right to create a new shortcut, and then enter the word that you want iOS to learn in the “Phrase” field. You can leave the “Shortcut” field blank. Tap ‘Save’ and enjoy your freedom to use whichever words you want.

However, having done (admittedly limited) tests using both systems of adding words to iOS, I still think the Contacts solution is the better one. I have noticed that when words are entered into my iOS Contacts list, iOS will use them as autocorrect suggestions when I start typing. Sometimes iOS will even suggest autocorrections based on “names” from the Contacts list, but does not seem to do that for the Shortcuts. Siri and iOS’ dictation will also use your Contacts for matching spoken words.

So if you have a favorite word that iOS doesn’t recognize, whether it’s one of the 7 words you can’t say on television or some obscure idiom of your own choosing, you can keep iOS out of your ducking way.