Apple's iPhone keyboard blocks around 100,000 words, including political phrases such as 'Sleepy Joe'

A list of around 100,000 entries

Derik Kauffman, an independent researcher, says Apple's iPhone keyboard holds a list of around 100,000 words and phrases that it will not suggest through autocomplete or swipe-typing. His conservative estimate excludes Chinese characters, while other reports from the same day describe the list as more than 100,000 entries or as tens of thousands. Apple has not confirmed any figure. Users can still type the words by hand, but the keyboard will not offer them and often fails to recognise them when a finger glides across the keys. The findings were reported by Reuters on Friday, 6 November.

What the list contains

According to Kauffman, most of the entries are offensive or relate to drugs, sex and violence. The list also holds politically charged phrases, including "dictator Trump" and "sleepy Joe", as well as "right wing conspiracy", "Tibetan independence", "United Ireland", "Trayvon Martin" and "Kashmir dispute". Entries differ by language. In Hebrew, "occupied territories" cannot be swipe-typed, in French the phrase "immigration too high" is blocked, and in Arabic the keyboard will not complete "the Hamas movement". In Hindi, "Modi braggart" and "Rahul is Pappu" are blocked, which Kauffman reads as digs at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his leading opponent, Rahul Gandhi.

How the list was found

Kauffman, who founded Blacklight, a start-up that checks scientific papers for errors, first noticed the problem in September. His iPhone struggled to recognise "bad boy" and "white man" when he swipe-typed them, yet handled "bad girl" and "black man" without trouble. He used AI coding tools to investigate and located a file inside Apple's operating system that contained the table. Matt Suiche, an engineer at the security company Tolmo, independently recovered the same list and found that it closely matched Kauffman's findings. Reuters tested a sample of entries on an iPhone and found that the phrases were either missing from suggestions or hard to enter by swipe.

Apple's response

Apple did not explain why political expressions were included, and it did not say how many entries the list contains. In an email, the company did not comment directly on Kauffman's findings. Apple has said that users can still type any word they want and can ignore keyboard suggestions. It also says the system is configured not to suggest words or phrases that could be considered inappropriate or offensive.

Consistency and reaction

Kauffman said that Apple applies the feature inconsistently, pointing to the fact that "read smut" can be swipe-typed while "read gay smut" cannot. He acknowledged that Apple may want to stop users from accidentally sending obscene messages or inflammatory slogans, and he described the approach in blunt terms.

“It's a very light-touch form of censorship. But at the scale that Apple is operating, it only takes a light touch to have a big impact.”

He also said that the pattern is not unique to English speakers.

“Every major language has some version of this.”

The findings have raised questions about how much control Apple should have over keyboard suggestions, especially where restrictions go beyond profanity. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide use iPhones, so the company's choices shape how a large number of people communicate.