iOS 17: What's New With Autocorrect, Dictation and the Keyboard

[daryl1965]

Apple in iOS 17 introduced a range of small features and tweaks that make using the iPhone a better, and more intuitive experience. There are minor but notable changes to the keyboard, which is a key part of the operating system.

This guide highlights everything new with the keyboard and keyboard-related features.

Autocorrect

The machine learning technology that Apple is using for autocorrect has been improved in iOS 17. Apple says it has adopted a "transformer language model," that will better personalize autocorrect to each user. It is able to learn your personal preferences and word choices to be more useful to you.

After using iOS 17 for a few weeks, most users will notice that the autocorrect suggestions are much better at predicting what you want to say and presenting words for you to tap to autofill. When you use acronyms, shortened words, slang words, and colloquialisms, autocorrect is not as aggressive with the automatic correcting, but it is still able to correct accidental typos.

On stage, Apple's Craig Federighi humorously said that the iPhone would no longer swap in "ducking" for a certain swear word that you actually meant to type. The new engine still makes mistakes, but most users should find that it is improved compared to iOS 16.

Correcting Autocorrect

When autocorrect changes a word, there is now a blue line underneath the corrected word that you can tap. Tapping the blue line shows the original word that you typed, and you can tap it to choose that instead. If there are other possible autocorrect options for what you typed, those will also be displayed.

The functionality is useful for when autocorrect does correct something that you did not want fixed because it takes just a tap to revert rather than having to retype the word.

Word Autofill

Some word suggestions now pop up in line when you are typing, and you can tap on the space bar to insert them. If you start typing "Didn't" for example, the iPhone will offer 't as an autofill option after you type "didn," so that you can just tap on the space bar rather than continuing to spell out the word.

It makes for quicker typing, and this is a function that gets better as you use iOS 17 more often.

Sentence Autofill

The word autofill feature that makes suggestions inline also works for entire sentences in some cases, so you can type what you need with just a tap or two of the space bar.

Better Grammar Correction

After you finish typing a sentence, if you've used a word wrong or have another grammar error in what you've written, the iPhone will let you know by highlighting the mistake. You can tap on it to see suggested corrections.

As an example, if you write a sentence and accidentally swap "affect" for "effect," the iPhone can tell and will suggest the word you should be using instead, or in some cases, just correct it. This is true for then/than, they're/their/there, two/to/too, your/you're, its/it's, and other common grammatical errors. iOS 16 corrected some of these issues, but iOS 17 does more.

Dictation

The Dictation feature built into the iPhone has been updated with the same transformer language model that Apple is using for text, so dictation should be able to better suss out what you're attempting to say when there are multiple word options.

Dictation is still far from perfect in our testing, and it does take some time to get better.

Stickers as Emoji

Emoji are an integral part of the keyboard, and in iOS 17, stickers and emoji have been merged. If you tap on the emoji icon on the keyboard, it will bring up emoji and also all of your stickers. The end result is that you can use stickers in more places across the operating system, and in the Messages app, emoji can be used like stickers and can be placed anywhere.

Read More

More information on all of the new features in the iOS 17 update can be found in our iOS 17 roundup.

Article Link: iOS 17: What's New With Autocorrect and the Keyboard

Anyone know if this auto correct also applies to iPad os???

 

[user1234]

I just want English and Swedish simultaneous dictionary support so I can finally get rid of the buggy mess of Gboard, but I've been waiting for years and it doesn't seem to be happening in iOS 17 either. But I guess it's more difficult for Apple to do than it was for Swiftkey back in 2010 when they were a startup.

 

[nt5672]

Is there still no multi-punctuation key? You can't hold the period key to bring up question marks or exclamation points? Why is this basic feature still missing?

Here's the Pixel keyboard:

The iPhone will never be as easy to use as the Pixel. Apple no longer innovates, it only spends money to change after other companies have led the way. If one looks at any Apple App you will notice that the UI was never reviewed or challenged by someone with classic (experimental) experience in usability.

 

[ifxf]

It appears they still don’t allow you access to the learned dictionary to delete/edit learned words.

 

[Rivvvers]

Is there still no multi-punctuation key? You can't hold the period key to bring up question marks or exclamation points? Why is this basic feature still missing?

Here's the Pixel keyboard:

God I wish, that would be real usefull

 

[LV426]

Craig must have got fed up with the word duckwit appearing every time he typed Federighi.

 

[sparkinstx]

I'm glad to hear they're improving autocorrect. I turned it off on my phone about a month ago, because I was tired of how intrusive it was. I've had to manually correct some typos, but I'm getting used to that.

I was running 16.6 in beta (waiting for the turn on Do Not Disturb during events bug to be fixed - it's still not), and I'm thinking I might install the next 17 beta.

 

[IIGS User]

Duck yeah auto correct improvements!

and we're ducking done here.

I can't tell you how many times I've sent "ducking autocorrect" as a second message.

 

[Devnul0]

What needs to happen with autocorrect is not allowing it to occur when it's too late to take action to fix it. I hate when I type something correctly into a field and tap return and it changes what I've typed then submits/commits the changed text without any opportunity for me to correct the bogus autocorrect.

 

[George Bailey]

The rate that terms like "machine learning" and "AI" are being carelessly thrown around these days is nausiating.

In this case, the "Transformer" they mention is the same recent innovation that made ChatGPT practical. It's what the T stands for. So machine learning seems reasonably appropriate here.

 

[George Bailey]

Cool! More stuff I don't care about or use. Well done Apple.

No worries, going forward we'll have them check with you first before making any changes or additions.

 

[Dark_Omen]

It’s nice you’re so invested in your job and firmly believe everyone must have the latest Apple toy, and if someone doesn’t want or cannot afford it, they’re a loser you cannot stand. It speaks more about your character than mine.

My point is there is zero reason for Apple to keep a basic mondaine feature like an autocorrect upgrade from a 3 year old phone. Also, in my country, the trade-in value is 182 euro. While a iPhone 14 pro is 1328 euro. I don’t know if math is one of your skills but that’s a lot of money to get a slightly less sucky autocorrect. Maybe i should go and work in a cell phone store: it apparently makes good money. And creates wonderful personalities.

Then don't complain that you don't get the latest tech through a software upgrade? Simple as that.

$800-$350 divided by 36 months isn't much money. If you can't afford that, it's time to make life changes.

 

[VulchR]

Nice to know that the spellcheckers have finally moved on from the technology used in the 1980's. Hopefully this will begin to address context rather than looking one word at a time, so that I don't keep misspelling 'to the' as 'tot he' and 'got it' as ... well ... something else.

 

[O.N.Y.X]

What needs to happen with autocorrect is not allowing it to occur when it's too late to take action to fix it. I hate when I type something correctly into a field and tap return and it changes what I've typed then submits/commits the changed text without any opportunity for me to correct the bogus autocorrect.

Oh yes. And this is in English. Now imagine how much utter nonsense pops up in a different language… at some point I ran berserk and turned it off.

 

[Saturn007]

Will the new autocorrect will finally fix long-standing typos and punctuation problems? Let's hope that it properly handles inadvertent commas, missing spaces between words, and mistaken letters instead of spaces between words (e.g., c, b, n, m).

I’m not ho,ding ❌ my breath! 😁 (Left that comma error in there as an example of something Apple's AC currently doesn't know how to fix!)

Anyonenknow ❌ 😁 if the new autocorrect will finally handle apostrophes correctly? For example, on my devices, it insists on “it's” rather than “its”, every time! It's forever putting apostrophes in where they don’t belong — and you can't use text replace to preempt them,neither. ❌ 😁

That last word was “, either”, but instead of the space, I accidentally hit the m, and AC corrected it to “neither” while fai,ing ❌ 😁 to put in a space after the comma.​

Will AC ever live up to its promise of learning from our corrections? I accidentally typed “that'd” for “that's” a couple of months ago — and have repeatedly fixed it. Yet, it keeps accepting “that'd” or autocorrecting something else to “that'd”.

​

Autocorrect is an utter mess. Let's just hope Apple finally gives us the ability to correct its dictionary on an item-by-item basis and even go into its database or dictionary and block individual corrections or substitute our own. As noted, iPad and iPhone OS's current text replacement cannot fix or override many or most of auto-correct's errors.

I'm all for Apple using language models for AC for recent devices, but they'd be doing right by their long-time customers to tweak it and fix such problems for many earlier models, too. It's critical to using the on-screen keyboard.

Otherwise, the new autocorrect comes with a tinge of a deliberate upgrade push rather than a fix that’d ❌ responsive to millions of existing customers. Improving the current auto-correct for older models doesn't require language models. Word's spell-checker has been brilliant for years, doesn't use AI, and readily catches such errors. Apple should do no less!

 

[NightFlight]

Yeh, autocorrect. It basically doesn’t work, at all and hasn’t for years. Any improvement will be huge.

Yeah, that's the thing. Autocorrect and dictation are terrible on iOS. Been using 17 for a bit and while it still isn't perfect it's an improvement. Android still does autocorrect better and dictation FARRRR better.

 

[hagar]

Then don't complain that you don't get the latest tech through a software upgrade? Simple as that.

$800-$350 divided by 36 months isn't much money. If you can't afford that, it's time to make life changes.

You got some attitude for some random sales guy.

While you keep missing my point: autocorrect is not the latest tech requiring more than 0.69 TFLOPS.

Yes, I use difficult numbers and words because I’m an engineer. So don’t you worry about me not being able to afford the latest tech.

 

[Gator5000e]

They need to add an Add to Dictionary option when a word it doesn't recognize is underlined. That way you can easily add a word that you use constantly without having to go into the settings.

Also, the auto correct needs to recognize words that are joined by the accidental tapping of a letter in the bottom row instead of the space bar. Seems like the auto correct would at least recognize that possibility instead of getting No Replacement Found. Gboard can recognize this and offer the correct replacement but I prefer the Apple keyboard because the space bar cursor works much better on the Apple keyborad than on Gboard. Honestly, I can't see why Apple can't get this fixed.

 

[quagski]

Is there a way to completely delete your "dictionary" or autocorrect library? Mine has gotten all wonky over time and I can't find a way to start from scratch.

 

[iJest]

Is there a way to completely delete your "dictionary" or autocorrect library? Mine has gotten all wonky over time and I can't find a way to start from scratch.

Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone > Reset > Reset Keyboard Dictionary


I really hope this is a big improvement over the current autocorrect in place. Right now, it's quite atrocious.

 

[Dark_Omen]

You got some attitude for some random sales guy.

While you keep missing my point: autocorrect is not the latest tech requiring more than 0.69 TFLOPS.

Yes, I use difficult numbers and words because I’m an engineer. So don’t you worry about me not being able to afford the latest tech.

Obviously I don't do that in person. This is an Internet forum so I don't care to act "professional" because there's no benefit to it.

 

[edbern]

The rate that terms like "machine learning" and "AI" are being carelessly thrown around these days is nausiating.

Yes, you should be able to misspell nauseating the old-fashioned way. Oh wait

 

[willchris]

I got so used to not being able to use autocorrect because when I type in my native language I never use special characters. We switched to typing that way because back in the SMS days they would either count as 15+ letters or convert the message into an MMS and on top of that there was a high chance they would get replaced by blank squares when received if the person you were messaging had a different phone. It stuck so now we type that way casually and the correct version is reserved for professional settings.

I was about to say that all these improvements looked great and express my sadness over not being able to experience them myself but then I realized I finally will be! That's the whole point. I just got super excited for iOS 17 now!

 

[name99]

"'When autocorrect changes a word, there is now a blue line underneath the corrected word that you can tap."

Hah! I suggested this to Apple (with blue line) about five years ago.
They took their time, but eventually...
happy happy joy joy

Maybe in 5 years they'll correct the (oh so many) problems with eSIMs that I sent to them a few weeks ago.

 

[polyphenol]

I got so used to not being able to use autocorrect because when I type in my native language I never use special characters. We switched to typing that way because back in the SMS days they would either count as 15+ letters or convert the message into an MMS and on top of that there was a high chance they would get replaced by blank squares when received if the person you were messaging had a different phone. It stuck so now we type that way casually and the correct version is reserved for professional settings.

I was about to say that all these improvements looked great and express my sadness over not being able to experience them myself but then I realized I finally will be! That's the whole point. I just got super excited for iOS 17 now!

I think special characters are pretty unimportant in English (except a few foreign words). But in Welsh, they can be very important. (A learner so this might not be a good example.) Tân is "fire": Tan is "until". Probably easy to guess which is meant in that example but there are others that are not so easy. Do you not have such issues in your language?