Too Many Autocorrect Fails? Tweak These Keyboard Settings on Your iPhone and iPad (2024)

Have you ever been typing a text message on your iPhone only for the built-in auto-correction feature to change a word and screw up the meaning of the entire sentence? And before you catch the error, the text is sent. Thankfully, you can undo those typos, but you can also prevent them in the first place by tweaking your keyboard settings.

You’re able to turn off the auto-correction feature completely as well as control auto capitalization, predictive text, and other options. You can even create text shortcuts to convert an entire word or a series of letters into something else, such as your name or address. If you have iOS 17 or iPadOS 17, autocorrect promises to be more accurate based on the context of your words. Plus, you can take advantage of inline predictive text to finish a sentence. Here’s how this all works.

Turn Off Autocorrect

To disable autocorrect completely, go to Settings > General > Keyboard on your iPhone or iPad and disable the switch next to Auto-Correction. The next time you open a text message and start typing, you will notice that your device will no longer change words that aren’t in the keyboard’s dictionary, such as proper names.

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Instead of trying to automatically "correct” these words, your device will simply flag them as possible misspellings. Tap the underlined word and you may see some alternative words. If you don’t want to see the red lines indicating a possible misspelled word, return to the Keyboard settings screen and turn off Check Spelling.

(Credit: Lance Whitney / Apple)

Use Predictive Text

Predictive text offers suggestions for your current word and the next word, but it doesn’t force its suggestions on you. The predictions appear just above the keyboard. It also displays the exact letters you have typed in quotes, so you can easily choose that if it's correct. To add any predictive word to your sentence, just tap it.

With iOS 17 or iPadOS 17 or higher and an iPhone 12 or later, you may also see predictive text within the sentence itself. To add the predicted characters or words to your sentence, just tap the Spacebar.

(Credit: Lance Whitney / Apple)

If you don’t want your phone predicting what you might be about to type, go to the Keyboard settings screen and turn off the switches next to Predictive Text and Show Predictions Inline. However, you may want to keep this feature on, especially if you disable Auto-Correction and Check Spelling.

(Credit: Lance Whitney / Apple)

Edit Autocorrections

(Credit: Lance Whitney / Apple)

If you kept the auto-correction feature enabled, you can more easily cancel any autocorrects you don’t want to keep. For this to work, you’ll need to be running iOS 17 or iPadOS 17 or higher. The next time you type a word that results in an autocorrect, you should see that the new word is briefly underlined. Tap the word and you should see your original word along with other suggestions. Choose your original word to revert back to it.

Use Curse Words

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In the past, the autocorrect feature would automatically correct profane words to something more benign. But dammit, sometimes you just feel like cursing. Now, you can type the F word, for example, and it won’t be changed to duck.

Update Your Keyboard's Dictionary

If you decide not to disable Auto-Correction and Check Spelling, you can add words and phrases to your keyboard’s dictionary so they won’t be flagged. Go to the Keyboard settings screen, tap Text Replacement, and select the + icon. Now, type the word or phrase you want to add into the Phrase box and it will no longer be flagged as incorrect.

(Credit: Lance Whitney / Apple)

With the Shortcut box, you can avoid having to type a certain word or phrase every time. For example, you could add "good morning" to the Phrase box and "GM" to the Shortcut box. Then every time you write "GM" in a sentence, your phone will turn it into "Good Morning" as you type. To delete a text replacement or shortcut from the list, swipe it to the left and tap Delete.

(Credit: Lance Whitney / Apple)

Any text replacements or shortcuts you set up are added across all your Apple devices as long as iCloud syncing is enabled. To clean out any custom words you no longer want, go to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone > Reset and choose Reset Keyboard Dictionary.

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Dictate Your Words

If you don't trust your thumbs to hit the right buttons, you can avoid typing altogether with voice dictation. In the Keyboard settings, make sure Enable Dictation is turned on. When you next want to compose a text message or email, tap the microphone icon and start speaking. Remember to include punctuation marks as you speak. Tap the microphone icon again to stop dictating.

(Credit: Lance Whitney / Apple)

Apple also uses its voice recognition technology to help people navigate their phone with their voice, so it should be able to capture most of your text correctly.

More Keyboard Settings to Change

You can further customize your keyboard from the settings screen. While many of the options here are useful, you can disable any of them by turning off their switches.

(Lance Whitney/Apple)

• Auto-Capitalization will capitalize the first letter of a word after you type a period. It also allows you to double-tap the spacebar to enter a period.

• Enable Caps Lock keeps the uppercase keyboard active if you double-tap the Shift key.

• Smart Punctuation automatically converts certain punctuation marks to make them look better, such as turning straight quotation marks into curly ones or a double dash into an em dash.

• Character Preview displays a larger preview of each character you tap on the keyboard as a way to confirm that you pressed the right key. For some people, this option may be annoying or distracting. For others, it’s a helpful way to more clearly tell if you’re tapping the correct key.

• Enable Key Flicks (iPad only) is a quick way to type an alternate character. Flick down on a specific key, and the character that appears at the top of the key is entered. For example, flicking down on the A key enters a @, flicking down on the D key enters a $, and flicking down on the X key enters a -. You probably want to keep this enabled, unless you keep accidentally flicking instead of tapping.

• “.” Shortcut automatically inserts a period if you double-tap the spacebar, an effective way to end one sentence and start a new one.

• Slide to Type (iPhone) or Slide on Floating Keyboard to Type (iPad) lets you slide your finger along different keys to form a word. Often a quicker way to create a word, this option should not interfere with your regular typing whether you use it or not. So you can typically leave it enabled.

• Delete Slide-to-Type by Word deletes the entire previous word that you entered by sliding if you press the Backspace key immediately after entering it. If you find that the sliding feature sometimes results in incorrect words that you need to modify instead of deleting them completely, you may want to turn off this option.