More than 100,000 words and phrases in every major language are silently barred from appearing in iOS keyboard autocomplete and swipe-type predictions, Reuters reported today. The blocklist includes racial slurs, sexual and drug-related terms, and overtly political phrases such as ‘dictator Trump’, ‘sleepy Joe’, ‘covid was a hoax’, ‘left wing conspiracy’ and ‘illegal immigrant’.
The researcher used OpenAI’s Codex and Anthropic’s Claude Code to locate the list, which is stored as a hash table deep in the operating system. A second researcher independently verified the same blocklist. Apple said its keyboard’s prediction system is built to steer clear of content that could be seen as inappropriate or insulting, but stressed that users can still type any word and can override suggestions shown on screen.
Some less expected phrases also appear on the list, including ‘Santa isn’t real’ and ‘iMessage isn’t working’. The Verge noted that ‘bad girl’ is blocked while ‘bad boy’ is not.