How to Take Control of Autocorrect

Autocorrect is definitely a mixed bag. While it can save us from routine typos from time to time, it also can result in truly embarrassing autocorrect fails that’ll have you cursing at your “ducking” iPhone.

While autocorrect isn’t perfect, you can help tame it. The most important thing to remember about the feature is that it learns your words and preferences as you use it, so if you continually buck autocorrect’s changes, it won’t bug you with them in the future. You can also “train” autocorrect is a hurry by opening a text app, like Notes, and typing a word a few times — just remember to tap the X on the correction bubble to negate its suggestion.

Here are a few additional ways to take control of autocorrect.

3. Reset Your Keyboard

If all else fails and your autocorrect seems like it’s specifically out to get you, or the feature’s corrections just seem too far gone, you can “reset” your keyboard to force autocorrect to unlearn anything you’ve taught it.

To get a clean autocorrect slate, follow these steps.

1. Open the Settings app.
2. Navigate to General
3. Tap Reset
4. Tap on Reset Keyboard Dictionary.

At this point, you’ll have a fresh autocorrect library that you can begin training or tweaking.

2. Use Text Replacement

While not strictly an autocorrect feature, you can get around some of autocorrect’s more annoying corrections by entering them as text replacements.

1. Open the Settings app.
2. Then go to General.
3. Tap Keyboard.
4. Tap Text Replacement.
5. Then tap the Plus symbol.
6. Enter any phrase you want into the Phrase field — we’ll use “TTYL” as an example — but leave the Shortcut field blank.
7. Tap Save, and from now on, autocorrect won’t attempt to correct that word to “truly,” or whatever else it thinks you’re trying to say.

As an added plus, Text Replacement can be a great timesaver, too. For TTYL, you can add “talk to you later!” under the Shortcut field, then whenever you type TTYL anywhere in iOS, it’ll automatically spell out the long phrase.

Pro Tip: create a unique Text Replacement shortcut for your email address — which will make logging into sites and services on your iPhone that much easier.

1. Turn off Autocorrect

You can’t lose a game that you don’t play. Similarly, you won’t experience any autocorrect fails if the feature is just turned off entirely. If you’re a pro typer, grammar whiz, or just prefer to catch your own mistakes, you can turn off autocorrect fairly easily via

1. Open Settings.
2. Tap General.
3. Tap Keyboard.
4. From here, just toggle Auto-Correction to off.

On a similar note, Predictive Text — those words and emojis that pop up above your keyboard as you’re typing — can be turned off as well.

1. Open Settings.
2. Tap General.
3. Tap Keyboard.
4. Toggle Predictive to off.