Text Parsing

[MozMan68]

Can someone explain to me why when I start typing in a name to send a text to someone close to me...one of my favorites...my wife, one of my kids, that anyone else with the same name or even a matching MIDDLE name comes up before them.

Ya know...people that I have NEVER sent a text to and will never send a text to are coming up first? WTF is with that, Apple??

It’s been this way since iOS 11, so I can’t really blame ios12, but I don’t know where else to ask about this.

 

[MozMan68]

Can someone at least confirm that they have the same issue? I can't believe this doesn't bother people as much as me...but then again, I'm typically a crabby person, so...

 

[NoBoMac]

Simple sort order combined with simple "contains" pattern match.

Apologies is stating the obvious...

Example: I have a contact whose name (a business) is akin to "123 and Stuff", have a friend with first name "Andy" and also another acquaintance with the name of "Andrea". Want to send a text to Andrea, type in "and", get "123" entry first (as numbers have a higher sort order vs. letters), then Andrea, followed by Andy, and then a bunch of others, mostly businesses with the word "and" in the title.

Sure, Apple could put in some type of "Favorites" or "Frequently Messaged" function. But it is what it is. And has not bothered me: no issue typing out "Andrea" or enough of it to just get her contact.

ADD: a hack, build up your Favorites list. Tap Phone app, tap Favorites, tap circle-i next to contact, tap Message. Or, don't use Phone's favorites for calls: set up the list to do messages. Then add the Favorites widget to the swipe-right-from-home screen. Then just need to swipe and tap the desired entry. And pretty sure a Shortcuts widget could be created to present a list of Favorites for Messages and then send a Message to them.

 

[MozMan68]

Simple sort order combined with simple "contains" pattern match.

Apologies is stating the obvious...

Example: I have a contact who's name (a business) is akin to "123 and Stuff", have a friend with first name "Andy" and also another acquaintance with the name of "Andrea". Want to send a text to Andrea, type in "and", get "123" entry first (as numbers have a higher sort order vs. letters), then Andrea, followed by Andy, and then a bunch of others, mostly businesses with the word "and" in the title.

That really doesn’t explain why the first selection with some whose middle name is the word being typed in. And they are at the very end of my contacts list...seriously..I see no “order” to it all other than it shows me who I DON’T want to see.

Sure, Apple could put in some type of "Favorites" or "Frequently Messaged" function. But it is what it is. And has not bothered me: no issue typing out "Andrea" or enough of it to just get her contact.