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Apple maintains an undisclosed multilingual grey list of tens of thousands of words and phrases that its iOS keyboard does not autocomplete or recognise through swipe-typing, according to independent researcher Derik Kauffman.
The restriction does not stop iPhone users from typing any phrase. It mainly prevents the keyboard from offering the term as a suggestion or completing it during swipe-typing.
Kauffman estimates that the list contains around 100,000 entries, excluding Chinese characters. Most flagged terms relate to profanity, drugs, sex, violence, or offensive language.
The list also includes politically charged expressions. Reuters tests found that ‘Dictator Trump’ and ‘Sleepy Joe’ were difficult to enter through swipe-typing or were not offered through autocomplete.
Other affected phrases include ‘right wing conspiracy,’ ‘Tibetan independence,’ and ‘United Ireland.’ In tests, ‘United Ireland' sometimes became ‘United Iceland,’ while ‘Tibetan independence' turned into ‘Tibetan independences.’
The restrictions vary by language. In Hindi, the keyboard does not swipe-type phrases such as ‘Modi braggart’ or ‘Rahul is Pappu.' French users reportedly face limits on ‘immigration too high,' while Hebrew users cannot swipe-type ‘occupied territories.’
Kauffman said Apple’s aim to prevent users from accidentally sending offensive or provocative messages is understandable. But he argued that the system applies its rules unevenly. For example, read smut could be swipe-typed, but read gay smut could not. Similarly, white man produced white mean, while red man and blue man worked normally.
He described the approach as a ‘very light-touch form of censorship.’ At Apple’s scale, he said, even limited filtering can shape how millions of people communicate.
Apple did not directly address the list’s size, contents, or the reasoning behind specific political restrictions. The company said users can always type exact words or phrases manually and override predictive suggestions.
Apple said its keyboard is designed to avoid displaying suggestions that could be inappropriate or offensive. The company has previously faced criticism over predictive-text errors, including a glitch that briefly displayed ‘Trump’ when users dictated ‘racist.’
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