Apple's iOS keyboard reportedly blocks over 100,000 words from predictive text, including political phrases
Blocked terms can still be typed by hand, but they will no longer be offered as suggestions, and the list's contents are now public.
A researcher reportedly uncovered a blocklist of more than 100,000 words and phrases in iOS that keep them out of predictive text and swipe-typing suggestions across major languages. The list includes slurs and sexual or drug terms, but also political phrases such as "dictator Trump" and "covid was a hoax", along with harmless ones like "Santa isn't real". Users can still type any blocked term letter by letter, though the keyboard may silently rewrite some words while swipe-typing. The researcher, Derik Kauffman, said he used AI coding tools to dig the list out of the operating system and convert a stored hash table back into readable text. Another researcher told Reuters they had independently recovered the same list, and Apple said the keyboard is meant to avoid potentially inappropriate suggestions.
Why it matters
The list shows that Apple's keyboard decides, on a large scale, which words and phrases users are steered away from, including some political wording. Users who want a term that is blocked can still type it out letter by letter, so the practical effect falls on predictive suggestions rather than on what can be written. Because the list was recovered independently by two researchers and Apple has said it is meant to filter potentially inappropriate content, readers now have a concrete view of how that filtering works in practice.
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