They’re raging against the machine.
Apple is being ripped to shreds over its wonky autocorrect function, which users claim is so bad it feels like battling their own keyboard. The firm’s glitchy automated text editor was brought to light via an X post with nearly 2 million views.
“I don’t know what is going on with your damn keyboard, but I have NEVER in the 19 years of owning iPhones, had to backspace, retype, start over, correct words as much as I am now! And what happened to autocorrect!?” vented the fed-up tech fan. “Is that not a thing anymore? Please fix this!”
Another user fumed in the comments, “And why the heck does it act like the word ‘were’ doesn’t exist?”
“Sometimes it changes a word and I have one heckuva time changing it,” said a third. “It’s almost like my phone is insisting it’s correct and it won’t let me highlight it or move to the wrong letters to fix it. I end up tapping all over the place!”
“Dear apple autocorrect: it’s NEVER ‘duck you,’” said another, ripping the autocorrect’s insistence on changing the four-letter expletive to the aquatic avian’s name.
Apple has two functions to help error-proof the typing process: autocorrect, which uses the dictionary to spellcheck words while the user’s typing and corrects mistakes automatically, and predictive texts that estimate what you’re going to say based on prior convos or typing style and complete sentences accordingly.
Unfortunately, as users pointed out, this presumptive tech doesn’t always stick the landing.
These tools have long been the subject of ridicule, but complaints ramped with the release of the iOS 6, which was so clunky it felt like operating a phantom keyboard.
These Mad Libs-esque gaffes were ripped in the Reddit thread “It’s Not Just You – The iOS Keyboard is Broken,” which currently has over 2,600 upvotes and 736 comments.
Common complaints included missed taps, lags and either filling in the blank with words that seemed out of context or changing correctly-typed words into complete gibberish, TechRadar reported.
The December release of the iOS 26.2 update, which used AI to enhance autocorrections, did little too remedy.
While Apple claimed it had smoothed out the rhetorical wrinkles with the release of the iOS 26.4 in March, which was billed as offering “improved keyboard accuracy when typing quickly.”
Needless to say, users were unimpressed with the alleged improvement with many claiming that the AI only succeeded at leading the automated spellcheck astray.
“I’ve used iPhone for 5-6 years and the keyboard was never this bad before,” declared one disillusioned user. “The power of AI is overtaking human typing now, it changes simple words like ‘love’ to ‘live’ and adds wrong phrases all the time.”
Nonsensical punctuation also seemed to be a recurring theme. “Why do all of my words have periods in between them when there’s not even a period on the screen to choose from?!?!” griped one user.
Many critics noted that voice-to-text was equally buggy with one fuming that the accessory “creates made-up words!”
“I said ‘applesauce’ and iPhone typed ‘Appellatsos’– say what?!” they spluttered. Or
“iPhone typing was better 10 years ago than it is now,” concluded one users.
Fortunately, there are some ways to stop a texting session from going off the rails. Techsperts advised opening Settings, going to General, then Keyboard, and selecting Text Replacement.
They can then type in the recurring typo and what they actually meant, prompting to iPhone to keep it in mind for next time. Meanwhile, one can also shake out the digital dictionary’s cobwebs by hitting “Reset iPhone” in “Settings” and then clicking on “Reset Keyboard Dictionary.”
Failing that, the best course of action is to go old school and type without autocorrect entirely.
One can simply go to Settings > General > Keyboard, and switch Auto–Correction off.
