Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

subjonas

macrumors 603
Original poster
Feb 10, 2014
6,257
6,737
“Autocorrect” is so bad that it often takes something I type correctly, and it changes it into something incorrect, often a gibberish word. What gives? It used to be so good years ago. Why did it get so bad and why has it not gotten better after so long? For both iOS and iPadOS. Is it just me?
 

TechRunner

macrumors 65816
Oct 28, 2016
1,345
2,327
SW Florida, US
Rest assured, it's not just you. I can't for the life of me understand how autocorrect for iPadOS is so bad. Especially when you begin typing a word, and backspace a few characters to fix it, and autocorrect adds the new letters to an autocorrected word, then inserts it on its own, creating some ridiculous gibberish, like you said. It's my number one frustration with my iPad.
 

now i see it

macrumors G4
Jan 2, 2002
11,250
24,269
It definitely sucks and is worst than it was on iOS 9 but you can train it to be better.

If some words always trip it up,
Go to: Settings>General>Keyboard> Text Replacement.

Then enter the word you want and the word you want iOS to display.

For example, iOS always wanted to change the word “mile” into “Mike” every time. So I went into Text Replacement and entered “mile” for both the phrase and shortcut.
I’ve got a long list in Text Replacement fixing lots of words.
Auto correct isn’t quite as bad now.
 

jav6454

macrumors Core
Nov 14, 2007
22,303
6,264
1 Geostationary Tower Plaza
I remember when the iPhone first came out, you could actually type wrong and the autocorrect would be too good that it actually understood the context of the conversation and corrected typos into the correct forms.

So much so, that a reviewer during his time with the feature summed it up in one phrase: "Trust the type force".

Now? Abysmal.
 

The-Real-Deal82

macrumors P6
Jan 17, 2013
17,314
25,463
Wales, United Kingdom
Autocorrect on iPhone has been dreadful for a few years now and it frustrates the hell out of me. I sometimes look back at texts I’ve sent and the letter combinations it creates that aren’t even real words is mind boggling. I’m tempted to reset my dictionary and just start all over again in the hope it doesn’t mess up most things I type.
 

DeepIn2U

macrumors G5
May 30, 2002
13,051
6,984
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
What is sad is we’ve all someone gotten used to the poor autocorrect that the recipients dont’ even bother to ask what was intended they just understand.

There are parts of iPhone or services that continues to fail in quality and just left ignored which really upsets me. I really hope teams for autocorrect or the keyboard for iOS/iPadOS/WatchOS is not involved in this ridiculous car team that still wastes money and nothing coming to fruition.

I still think its’ a complete waste where Apple is TOO late and will deliver a sub-par product/service whenever it debuts.I mean they still cannot significantly improve Siri (AI) to match the competition … do you even think they’ll be good at self driving? Especially when team leads want to leave over working 2-days/wk and soon 3-days/week in the office.

If Apple cannot fix auto correct, nor significantly improve Siri - which of their customers would really want to spend in excess of $20K minimum for an Apple car?
 

The-Real-Deal82

macrumors P6
Jan 17, 2013
17,314
25,463
Wales, United Kingdom
What is sad is we’ve all someone gotten used to the poor autocorrect that the recipients dont’ even bother to ask what was intended they just understand.

There are parts of iPhone or services that continues to fail in quality and just left ignored which really upsets me. I really hope teams for autocorrect or the keyboard for iOS/iPadOS/WatchOS is not involved in this ridiculous car team that still wastes money and nothing coming to fruition.

I still think its’ a complete waste where Apple is TOO late and will deliver a sub-par product/service whenever it debuts.I mean they still cannot significantly improve Siri (AI) to match the competition … do you even think they’ll be good at self driving? Especially when team leads want to leave over working 2-days/wk and soon 3-days/week in the office.

If Apple cannot fix auto correct, nor significantly improve Siri - which of their customers would really want to spend in excess of $20K minimum for an Apple car?

Autocorrect and Siri are two features we all rely on and they are awfully unreliable. It’s funny you mention an Apple car as I was driving the other day and tried to dictate a text message response to my Apple Watch. Now, I have a fairly well spoken English accent with no regional twang. The result I got from Siri was comically dreadful and when I arrived at my destination, my work colleagues first comment was ‘what the hell was that text message about?’ Lol. Can you imagine asking Siri to go onto autopilot and it mistakes that for ‘speed up to 100mph and find the nearest wall’?
 

exoticSpice

Suspended
Jan 9, 2022
1,242
1,952
So maybe the machine learning head leaving is a blessing in disguise? (Changed an autocorrect inserted “disguise’s” just now lol)
Oh that head that left apple was great indeed. It's Apple's software management that needs changing. Apple's hardware is so top notch it makes their software look primitive.

Pretty embarrassing but since iOS 13 we haven't got any AI updates to Siri or the OS it self. Pick up a Pixel or any android phone and it has way better use of AI and ML than iPhone.

Here just a few things android does better than Apple's counterparts. Google assistant and autocorrect on android I would say is better.
 

Reggaenald

Suspended
Sep 26, 2021
864
798
Instead of writing „did *whatever*“ it changes it to „did. *Whatever“, or instead of believe it writes belobe.
It’s wild. Also potentially easy to correct misspelled words, like ipportunities aren‘t only not corrected automatically but when selected it doesn’t even suggest any corrections.
You’re not alone.
 
  • Like
Reactions: CE3

Reggaenald

Suspended
Sep 26, 2021
864
798
My favorite is when I write "Yes" and it wants to autocorrect it to "Yea". Over and over. I never wrote "Yea" in my life and I have no idea why it would come up with that ?
Because the autocorrect is feed by a database put together by a lot of users. Apparently a lot of people write Yea or even changed Yes to Yea.
In German I once wrote Menschen (Humans) and it changed it to Emanzen, which is a derogatory term for woman. A Google trends search showed to during the prior 3 months that word saw a significant uprise in use in Germany.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ManuCH

Reggaenald

Suspended
Sep 26, 2021
864
798
It definitely sucks and is worst than it was on iOS 9 but you can train it to be better.

If some words always trip it up,
Go to: Settings>General>Keyboard> Text Replacement.

Then enter the word you want and the word you want iOS to display.

For example, iOS always wanted to change the word “mile” into “Mike” every time. So I went into Text Replacement and entered “mile” for both the phrase and shortcut.
I’ve got a long list in Text Replacement fixing lots of words.
Auto correct isn’t quite as bad now.
That doesn’t really have much to do with autocorrect but, like the settings name suggests, auto replacement. I use it for symbols I can’t easily type on my iPhone, like °, , ∞, ® or even entire phrases. It isn’t supposed to replace autocorrect but I see why you did it and if it works good for you, just a shame Apple practically forced you to go to that length
 

ManuCH

macrumors 68000
May 7, 2009
1,601
1,206
Switzerland
By the way, there's a feature I've been wanting for years, but it will likely never be implemented: selectively disable autocorrect only for a certain language/keyboard.

I have friends in 3 language regions: English, Italian and German. Autocorrect works "fine" for English and Italian, but for the German part I use the Swiss dialect of German (Schwiizerdütsch), for which there is no autocorrect. For me it's a real pain, because I can turn autocorrect on or off completely (system-wide), but not by language.

It's very useful in Italian and English, but when I switch to Swiss German, I need to basically "tap away" every autocorrect suggestion that comes up, making typing way slower.

I didn't find a way so far to have a language/keyboard with no autocorrect. I wish Apple implemented that.
 
  • Like
Reactions: rocketbuc

Populus

macrumors 603
Aug 24, 2012
5,947
8,416
Spain, Europe
I have the impression that, since I started using my new iPhone 13 mini, where I am not logged in yet (not with my Apple ID), I seem to have a better working keyboard. Many of the mistakes and repetitions I suffer on older devices (“o lo”, instead of just “lo”, or ”e se” instad of just “se”, or “e de” instead of just “de”) doesn’t happen on the new device. And I have all my devices on iOS 15.

So I was wondering if there’s a way to delete everything the keyboard has learned from me during the past years, and start with a clean slate with this new iPhone. Maybe just disabling the dictionary synchronization via iCloud I get to solve this… not sure.
 

DeepIn2U

macrumors G5
May 30, 2002
13,051
6,984
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Autocorrect and Siri are two features we all rely on and they are awfully unreliable. It’s funny you mention an Apple car as I was driving the other day and tried to dictate a text message response to my Apple Watch. Now, I have a fairly well spoken English accent with no regional twang. The result I got from Siri was comically dreadful and when I arrived at my destination, my work colleagues first comment was ‘what the hell was that text message about?’ Lol. Can you imagine asking Siri to go onto autopilot and it mistakes that for ‘speed up to 100mph and find the nearest wall’?
Lol.

I’ve found voice to text using Siri (or directly) was more accurate in WatchOS than in iOS, but that’s my experience.

But I get you I cannot imagine driving a car guided by Siri alone. That would terrify me.
 
  • Like
Reactions: The-Real-Deal82

tornadowrangler

macrumors regular
Sep 5, 2020
168
335
Yes, we all notice with autocorrect gets something wrong and it should be improved, but you probably aren't noticing all the times that it gets right (because there's nothing to notice). I know sometimes I will notice that I've typed something completely unrecognizable, but then the correct word pops up!

I'm pretty sure typing on an iPhone would be much more frustrating without autocorrect than it is even with its current frustrations.
 

klasma

macrumors 604
Jun 8, 2017
7,452
20,753
So I was wondering if there’s a way to delete everything the keyboard has learned from me during the past years, and start with a clean slate with this new iPhone.
There’s Settings > General > Reset > Reset Keyboard Dictionary.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Populus
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.