How Fake Contacts Can Fix Dictation’s Proper Noun Problems
Apple doesn’t provide a user-editable list where you can add special words, but there is a back-door way to train Dictation—on all your Apple devices—to work more the way you prefer: through the Contacts app.
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Regardless of the number of words in the name or phrase, I put them all in the First Name field, with the hear-no-evil monkey 🙉 emoji in the Last Name field. That way, these spurious contacts sort to the very bottom of Contacts and don’t clutter the display. I also add them to a Proper Noun-Contacts list (mentally removing the “u” amuses me).
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Dictation picks up some of these entries quickly, such that you don’t have to do anything more. However, in other cases, it requires more training.
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Inserting a zero-width space in the middle of the word did indeed prevent Dictation from recognizing it. Unfortunately, the zero-width space also gets in the way of searching on the full name, so it’s best to put it as far back in the word as possible.
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The fact that we have to resort to hacks like this for basic functionality in 2026 is just sad
Truly, we live in an age of wonders.
I mostly can't stand Android, but the one thing I still miss is the keyboard. Even ten years ago it was far better than today's iOS keyboard.
I had hope when Apple announced third party keyboard support, but that was the first and last mention of it. Even Google gave up after a while because it was implemented so poorly.
I know this is about dictation, but same exact statements apply. Google's voice to text was better then than Apple's now.
I'm surprised OpenAI hasn't put keyboard functionality for this into the ChatGPT app, but again see above about terrible third party keyboard support.
Or you could just install MacWhisper? FWIW, although third-party keyboards can never be great, MacWhisper is certainly usable. I tend to use BSI* when possible, as it works pretty well for me and is local, but it's nice to have options for dictation that don't rely on such a ridiculous workaround (which, I suppose, also means Siri/dictation must know your contacts independently, which might or might not pose a privacy risk).
*Braille Screen Input, a way of Brailling into your iPhone with one or two hands like a Perkins Brailler or slate and stylus.
I have the opposite problem. Whenever I type "The " at the beginning of a sentence, it autocorrects to Theresa even when it makes no grammatical sense (because I have a contact with that name). Like I'll type "The lazy fox jumped over the brown dog." and it'll correct to "Theresa lazy fox...". Why does Apple think this is OK? I've even tried putting "The" as a keyboard shortcut that corrects to "The", and "the" to "the". I still often get "Theresa".
My dog's name is Toto. And although it comes up in various conversations with family members a few times a week for at least 16 years already, neither GBoard nor Apple's built-in keyboard has EVER got it right via glide-typing... I get it it's difficult, with all the letters on the same row, but I don't think I have ever used what it proposes, so why don't they ever learn my usage pattern is beyond me.
I will try creating a contact, but I'm not holding my breath.
It's so ridiculous, it's gotten up there on my list of stupid things, together with the lazy pluralisation using "(s)", which I passionately hate as a programmer myself.
