From ‘Dictator Trump’ to ‘bad boy’: Inside Apple’s secret list of 100,000 words your iPhone won’t autofill | Today’s news
Apple maintains an undisclosed multilingual list of tens of thousands of words and phrases that the iPhone keyboard avoids suggesting through predictive text, auto-correction and finger typing, according to a Reuters report citing an independent researcher.
Dubbed a digital ‘grey list’, the list reportedly contains nearly 100,000 words and their variations, although it does not prevent users from manually entering them into messages, emails or other applications.
The discovery raised questions of how Apple it decides which words should appear in keyboard designs and how the technology balances avoiding offensive language with accurately predicting what users are going to type.
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According to researcher Derik Kauffman, who discovered the list, most of the terms flagged are vulgar or offensive, or refer to drugs, sex and violence. However, the list also includes politically sensitive phrases and expressions related to political leaders, immigration and territorial disputes.
Apple has not publicly disclosed the existence or contents of the list.
Political phrases and expressions marked by Apple
English-language terms reportedly excluded from predictive text suggestions include “dictator Trump”, “sleepy Joe”, “right-wing conspiracy”, “Tibetan independence” and “United Ireland”.
The list also includes expressions in several other languages, with different words marked depending on the language used.
For example, in Hindi, the iPhone keyboard reportedly does not allow users to swipe to type “Modi braggart” or “Rahul is Pappu”. The terms are derogatory references to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Opposition Leader Rahul Gandhi.
Other examples cited by Kauffman include the French phrase “immigration too high”, which French users are said to be unable to cross, and “occupied territories”, which are marked in Hebrew.
“Every major language has some version of this,” Kauffman said.
Apple he said Reuters that users were always able to enter specific words and phrases manually and override predictive text suggestions. The company said its keyboard is designed to avoid suggesting language that could be inappropriate or offensive.
“It’s a very light form of censorship,” Kauffman said. “But at the scale that Apple works, it only takes a light touch to have a big impact.”
A researcher found inconsistencies in Apple’s word filtering
Kauffman said he understands Apple’s intent to prevent users from accidentally sending obscene messages or inflammatory language. However, he questioned the consistency with which the company applies its filtration system.
For example, the researcher found that users could swipe to type “read smut,” but the keyboard restricted the phrase “read gay smut.”
Similarly, “bad boy” and “white man” reportedly caused problems with finger typing, while “bad girl” and “black man” functioned without similar problems.
These differences have raised questions about the criteria Apple uses to determine which expressions should be excluded from keyboard designs.
How was Apple’s secret word list discovered?
Kauffman said he came across the list in September after noticing unusual interruptions when using the iPhone’s finger typing feature.
Swipe typing allows users to type words by continuously moving their fingers across the keyboard instead of tapping individual letters.
He noticed that the feature was struggling with certain combinations, including ‘bad boy’ and ‘white man’, which prompted him to investigate why.
The researcher then used OpenAI’s Codex and Anthropic’s Claude Code to examine the operating system and identify the source of the problem.
His investigation eventually revealed a collection of restricted expressions built deep into Apple’s operating system.
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Kauffman estimated that the list contains approximately 100,000 words and phrases, including their various permutations, although this number does not include Chinese characters.
Reuters tests the Apple iPhone keyboard
Reuters independently tested a small selection of terms identified by Kauffman and found that they were difficult to type with a swipe or were not offered through autocomplete.
For example, attempts to rewrite “United Ireland” often produced “United Iceland”, while “Tibetan independence” resulted in “Tibetan independence”.
Similarly, ‘white man’ was sometimes transformed into ‘white average’ and ‘sleepy Joe’ produced ‘Sleepy hope’.
The phrase “dictator Trump” could be typed with a swipe, but the keyboard didn’t offer that via autocomplete. Instead, she offered “dictatorial trump cards”.
