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.
