How To Troubleshoot iPhone Auto-Correct Problems

If you find that auto-correct on your iPhone or iPad is getting words wrong or getting in the way when trying to type unusual words or uncommon spellings for names, there are a few things you can do. You can train it using the Predictive Text Bar over the keyboard. You can also use the Settings app to add corrections, new words and names as Text Replacements. Also learn how to turn off auto-correct entirely or reset the dictionary.


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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to troubleshoot problems with Auto-Correct on your iPhone.
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Now we have all encountered a situation where we're typing on our iPhone or our iPad and auto-correct changes a word for typing to something else. This can happen if you misspell the original word and it auto-corrects to a different word entirely. But it also can happen if you're typing an unusual word or an uncommon name. So as an example here I'm going to use the Messages App since this is where it seems to happen the most because you're typing really quick messages to send to people.
So let's start by typing somebody's name and it's going to be an unusual spelling. You see here if I were to go to the next word, say by typing a space, it's going to auto-correct it to a different spelling of the name Madison. But I want that original spelling. I spelled it correctly. So what's the right thing to do here. Well, notice at the top here you've got these choices. This is the Predictive Text Bar here at the top of the keyboard. I'll show you in a minute how to turn this On or Off so if you don't see it you'll be able to turn it on. Here on the left you're always going to see exactly what you're typing in quotes. This means that if you tap this it will use exactly what you typed. That's what the quotes mean. They mean use this exactly. Then you're going to see suggestions. You're going to see two of them here. Now one of them, like this one, is highlighted. This means it's going to replace what you've typed with this if you simply hit the spacebar, period, or anything to indicate you're finished with the word. If this is not highlighted it means it is a suggestion but if you were to type space it would keep the word exactly as you spelled it. So in this case our main choice is to tap here to keep that word.
Here's another example. Here's an uncommon spelling for a common name and you could see it's going to replace that here with this word. I can tell that because it's highlighted. So if instead I tap here it will keep that spelling and actually give me a space so that I've moved onto the next word. Here's another example. You could see here it's going to try to auto-correct this to this right here. I don't want that so I'm going to tap this. Now let's try it again. Notice that the second time it's smart enough to say maybe you don't want this. One time, at least, you rejected the suggested word. So it's going to leave it there if I hit space.
Now the question is will it ever actually suggest the right word. So let's try that. Let's try typing this again and you could see it's still not suggesting the correct word. But it is not going to auto-replace it. Let's try typing it again. You could see there when I get to almost the last letter it does actually now recognize that as a name and give me a suggestion. So it has gone all the way from not recognizing the name at all to now actually suggesting it. As a matter of fact it's going to use it in auto-correct here if I were to continue with a space. You could see it would do that and it even knows to capitalize it because I've capitalized it before so it must be a name.
Now let's try another example. Let's say I want to type this. It doesn't have a suggestion there so I'm just going to use the space like that. Watch what happens when I type a second time. Then a third time. You see now it's actually suggesting it. Now it's actually suggesting it and it's going to use it as part of auto-correct. Now what happens if I realize I made a mistake and actually there should only be one n at the end of this name. Well, look what happens here. If I just type one n it's going to replace that with this. It's highlighted. So now how do I type that word with one n? If I hit the spacebar I get the two n's. I could, of course, backspace twice now and remove that last n. But how do I avoid having this even happen?
So let's type it again and what I want to do is select it here this time. Now you can see when I type just the one n it will suggest the two n's but now it's not going to automatically replace it. So hitting a space isn't going to be a problem. Let's try this. You could see here it doesn't have this name in its dictionary but it will allow me to type it though and not auto-replace it. Let's type it again and a third time. Now let's start typing a fourth time and you could see it actually appears here as a suggestion at this point. Now if I keep doing it you could see now how it appears as an auto-replacement. If I were to type space now it would actually add those two e's and even one more e is still going to do it. So now I can type space and you could see it does that.
But what happens if I do want to type that name at some point with one e?
Well, the one thing I could do is let it auto-correct and then backspace. Or I can tap here. The first time I do that now it's going to recognize that maybe sometime I don't want the two e's and it's going to change its behavior. So you can see it's still going to suggest the two e's version but is not going to auto-correct it. It will let me hit the space and use the one e version.
So the important thing to realize is that auto-correction on the iPhone is not straight forward. It's not a simple dictionary of words and it's adding words to it and then looking them up. It's looking at lots of different things. It's looking at context whether it's at the beginning of a sentence, the end of a sentence, what words are around it, which app you're using, what type of thing are you writing. It's looking at all the times you've spelled the word this way as opposed to similar words. It's looking at how many times you've done them and how recently you've done them. It's looking at when you corrected the word by going back or into the word and changing a letter. So it's taking a lot of different data. You're experience in changing a word is going to be different than these examples but the basic technique is to type the word the way you want it typed. Tap on the words with quotes in the Predictive Text Bar and then do that a few times until it behaves the way that you want. If it does auto-correct and get it wrong then backspace or go back and change the word. It's going to learn a little bit from that.
But every time you let it go and use the auto-corrected word, even though it's wrong, you're also training it that you want that auto-correction to be made.
Now if you don't see this Predictive Text Bar here at the top the way to get it is to go into the Settings App. You can do that really quickly here right from the keyboard by tapping and holding right here and then go into Keyboard Settings. That's going to take you into the Settings App right into Keyboards. The way to find it in the Settings App is in Settings go to General and then Keyboard. Then in here the Predictive Text is right there. If I were to turn it Off and then go back in you can see it disappears. So you're going to make sure you have that turned On. With it Off if you type something then you're going to get the old fashioned kind of bubbles at the top here. The only thing you can do there is either use the space to accept the word or tap the X there to reject it. By rejecting a few times you can actually teach your iPhone to not use that auto-correction. But you have to remember to reject it. You can't just ignore it. It will also learn if you backspace and go back and manually correct the word but using the X is the best way to do it. Now you can also turn Off auto-correction right here and then you'll never see auto-correction. It may suggest something but it's never going to highlight it.
Now there is a work-around for teaching your iPhones specific words. So if you're in the Settings, General, Keyboard section you go to Text Replacement. These are text replacements which are handy for a whole bunch of things. If you add a new one you get to pick a phrase and a shortcut. So for a phrase you want to use the actual real word as you want it to appear in anything that you type. Like that. Now for the shortcut what you want to do is use whatever you are accidentally typing, like that. Now this replacement will override any auto-correction. Anytime you mistype the word as this it is going to automatically replace it with that. You've created your own auto-correction here with these two words. But another thing you can do is type both exactly the same way. I don't see this mentioned many places. But if you try it you'll find that auto-correction gets a lot better with this word. It recognizes it as somethings you may want to type and it's not going to try to change it to something else.
So for particularly troublesome words that you're typing correctly but auto-correction is always getting in the way just simply put the same word as the phrase and the shortcut and add it here and you won't have that trouble with that word again.
Now I know that some people are going to ask if there is anyway to completely reset all of the Predictive Text and Auto-Correction and all of that. So it's just like having a new iPhone. There's no way to delete an unusual word or go in and edit it but you can reset it so it's just like you've never really typed anything on your iPhone before at all. What you want to do for that is to go into Settings and then General. All the way at the bottom of General you have Transfer or Reset iPhone. That sounds a bit scary. But what's even scarier is tapping this Reset Button. But if you do it you're actually going to get a list of options here. That includes some scary stuff like Resetting All Settings. But one of those is actually just to Reset the Keyboard Dictionary. That will erase all the information that's used by Auto-Correct. It will be like using your iPhone for the first time when typing text and getting those auto-corrections and Predictive Text suggestions.
Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.Related Subjects: iPad (157 videos), iPhone (230 videos)
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