iOS 18 and iOS 26 Autocorrect
Ever noticed you’re getting way more typos on iPhone lately? You’re not going crazy - it’s iOS.
Watch the video where he presses the U key, and the iOS keyboard confirms this visually, but then the U ends up changed to an H or a J, resulting in a word that isn’t even spelled correctly. I have not been able to reproduce this specific example, but I’ve been seeing behavior like this since at least iOS 18, and it’s clearly resonating as the video has more than 10K comments.
There is no word in the English language that begins or even contains the character string “thj”.
[…]
I cannot reproduce it today on an iPhone running iOS 26.1; perhaps it has been fixed, or it is intermittent. However, I have noticed entry lags in iOS 26 immediately after the keyboard becomes visible. It nearly always misses the first one or two characters I type.
I’ve certainly noticed an increase in typos over the years (which, for whatever reason, I attribute to Apple’s introduction of “differential privacy” in iOS 10). Alas (or perhaps, fortunately), while others can reproduce the specific issue shown the video, where typing “thumbs up” gives (for example) “thjmbs up,” I cannot.
Previously:
- iOS 17 Autocorrect
- iOS 15 Autocorrect
- iOS 13 Autocorrect Is Drunk
- Three iOS Keyboard Changes Apple Should Make
- Learning With Privacy at Scale
- iOS 11 Autocorrect Bug
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Because I make bad puns and assume I am harming the database, I reset my keyboard database twice a year. I don’t know if that actually helps or makes things worse.
Incorrect words in the personal dictionary has definitely been an issue for me, and has caused this kind of behavior.
I've noticed. For a year or more. Since I use an iPhone mini I chalked it up to my fat fingers. Maybe I should reconsider? Personal dictionary? Nah. But.... I'll check this out. Maybe reset it even.
AI? Sounds better. Particularly if it's *Apple* Intelligence, which I wish I could block more than most.
For now I think I'll call it "Ass' for "Apple spelling syndrome".
I don't get the issue typing "Thumbs" on my iPhone 12 mini (iOS 18.5) or iPhone 13 mini (iOS 18.7.1), What I do notice is after typing Thum the 12 primarily suggests Thumbs while the 13 suggests Them.
The keyboard in iOS 26.x is especially egregious for me. I can't put my finger on it exactly (sorry, bad pun), but it seems laggy, where keys take time precious ms to respond, and often the wrong keys are triggered, either by some sort of drift or inaccuracy due to the latency. Ever since I noticed I am way less accurate with the keyboard since installing 26 on the phone, I've been watching the letter popups, and I just catch it. I think it happens more often when the main thread is busy, but I am assuming it was busy before iOS 26, and was handled better. All of this is before the absolutely retarded autocorrect system takes perfectly fine words and just decides to replace them with words that have a different meaning altogether. Clowns are running the show at Apple. The idiot with the hair can make silly intro videos all he wants, but under his supervision, every facet of the software stack has gone downhill in unbelievably bad ways. Shameful.
Since iOS 26, I’ve noticed I’ve frequently been typing “the” with the e missing (I dare not type the bad result for fear of further poisoning autocorrect), and I’m not sure how or why that is happening.
One theory is that when I tap the e, sometimes the keyboard is thinking I tapped the leftmost autocomplete suggestion instead, which changed in iOS 26 to always be the “just keep what I’ve typed so far” option.
But it could be lag instead? Not sure.
While typing this message, I saw “for” get corrected to “of”, perhaps for the same reason. (i.e. the r got dropped and then the autocorrect swapped the two existing letters to make it a word)
The thing that truly drives me nuts is the Randomly capitalized Words that come up when using swipe keyboard. It’s been happening for years without any improvement and it doesn’t make any sense
Second comment - both (like always) fro my MBP.....
I really only use the iOS keyboard for message texting. And have been for a few year embarrassed by typos I never would have done. (This comment properly suggested a second "m" for comment... fat fingers I guess.)
Let *my* stupid typos alone!!!! By this I mean, don't give me "self-correction" in *any* form. All that does - and on my MBP it includes thinking about my grammar - is forces me (on my iPhone) to s-l-o-w down because I need to see what it thinks and then re-read what I typed. Sure, that may be a good thing. Probably is. But ultimately people I text know me and know what I meant to say. Don't "suggest" emoji. Don't suggest correcting what I want to spell. Don't - PLEASE - suggest what I intended to say. (I fear that is where this is headed.)
