The iPhone and iPad automatically correct spelling mistakes you make, thanks to autocorrect. This sometimes causes irritation, because sometimes the iPhone wants to correct a word while you did not mean it that way at all. For example, maybe you have your own filler words that don’t officially exist. Do you find it annoying that words are always corrected? Then you can also disable the autocorrect function.
- Deny autocorrect
- Disable autocorrect
- Disable spelling correction
- Why autocorrect is sometimes annoying
- Adjust autocorrect for foreign keyboard
- Prevent spelling mistakes with text replacement
Deny autocorrect
If a word suggestion appears while typing, you can of course also ignore this autocorrection. Above the keyboard, tap the first suggestion enclosed in quotes and your originally typed word will remain. If you just continue typing, autocorrect will implement the word replacement, but you don’t want that. Unfortunately, sometimes the word you typed yourself does not appear above the keyboard. Then you will have to delete the corrected word and write it again.
You can also use this word prediction in QuickType to your advantage to type faster. You don’t have to complete complete words if the correct suggestion is already there. You can read how it works in our tip.
Disable autocorrect
Do you want to disable autocorrect? This can be done via the settings. You do it as follows:
- Open the Settings app on the iPhone or iPad.
- Go to General > Keyboard.
- Turn off the Autocorrect switch.
Word suggestions will no longer appear on the screen and autocorrect can no longer intervene in your – undoubtedly error-free – spelled texts.
Turn off spelling correction on iPhone and iPad
If you disable autocorrect, iOS will continue to underline any misspelled words with a red dotted line. You can also disable this spelling correction:
- Open the Settings app on the iPhone or iPad.
- Go to General > Keyboard.
- Turn off the switch for Check Spelling.
Do you no longer have a red dotted line and do you only discover after sending an iMessage that you have made a major typo? Then you can also change an iMessage message, but don’t wait too long!
Why autocorrect is sometimes annoying
The autocorrect function of the iPhone and iPad mainly causes problems if you want to use words from another language. These do not appear in the Dutch dictionary, so the iPhone provides a suitable suggestion. Company names and street names may also not appear in the autocorrect dictionary.
Suppose you are writing an email message on your iPhone and you want to throw in an English sentence. The autocorrection immediately comes into action: ‘About’ becomes ‘Aboutaleb’ and ‘quick’ suddenly has to become ‘QuickTime’. Not that these are typically Dutch words, but they are in the dictionary of your iPhone. Perhaps you have developed your own colloquialism and you like to say ‘Maarja’ (becomes ‘Marja’), even though it is not actually a word. Autocorrect can also be annoying in such cases.
However, autocorrect is not always frustrating or inconvenient. You can use autocorrect more intelligently with the tips from the article below.
Adjust autocorrect for foreign keyboard
Do you like to use English terms or do you regularly throw in a French or Spanish pronunciation? In that case, iOS continuously tries to correct you when you use a word from a foreign language. You can prevent this by adding the relevant language as an extra keyboard:
- Open the Settings app on the iPhone or iPad.
- Go to General > Keyboards.
- Tap Add keyboard.
- Choose the keyboard you want to add.
Prevent spelling mistakes with text replacement
If you often make the same spelling mistakes, you can also prevent this by using the text replacement function. Text Replacement is actually intended to make it easy to type longer texts, but you can also use it for common typos.
The iPhone contains the sentence ‘I’ll be right there!’ already pre-programmed with the keyword ‘ikz’. You can set new keywords yourself. For example, if you often type ‘electricity’ with a c, you turn this into a keyword. As soon as you spell this word incorrectly, iOS automatically changes it to ‘electricity’ with a k.
You can also use text replacement for much longer texts. You could generate a thank you note in this way by typing just about three characters, for example ‘#bd’ or ‘bdnkt’. Choose a letter combination that you do not use in normal texts. For example, the word ‘thank you’ is a bad choice, because you sometimes use this word if you do not want to type an extensive thank you note.
If you found this an interesting tip, you might also be interested in:
- Reset autocorrect to default dictionary
- Use autocorrect smarter on iPhone and iPad
- Add words to the autocorrect dictionary
