Researcher Derik Kauffman says he has identified a file inside Apple’s operating system containing words and phrases excluded from iPhone keyboard suggestions, including political expressions. His conservative estimate puts the number of entries at around 100,000, excluding Chinese characters.
The restrictions he describes affect autocomplete and swipe-typing, which lets users form words by sliding a finger across the keyboard. They do not prevent people from entering the same words manually.
Apple said its keyboard is designed to avoid suggesting offensive or inappropriate language. The company also said users can still type any word they want and override predictive text suggestions.
How Kauffman investigated the keyboard
Kauffman, founder of Blacklight, a startup that checks scientific papers for errors, said he found the list in September after noticing differences in how his iPhone handled certain phrases.
He said swipe-typing struggled to recognise “bad boy”, while “bad girl” worked without difficulty. He described a similar contrast between “white man”, which caused problems, and “black man”, which did not.
Kauffman said he used AI coding tools to investigate the behaviour and eventually located the file within Apple’s operating system. He said the total could vary depending on how words, phrases and their permutations were counted.
Matt Suiche, an engineer at security company Tolmo, said he separately recovered the same list and cross-referenced Kauffman’s findings against Apple’s internal data. Suiche said he obtained a near-perfect match, offering a second researcher’s account of recovering the material.
Political expressions and swipe-typing differences
According to Kauffman, most of the entries are offensive or relate to drugs, sex and violence. He also identified political expressions across several languages and said different languages had different flagged words and phrases.
Political examples Kauffman identified include:
- “Dictator Trump” and “Sleepy Joe”.
- “right wing conspiracy”, “Tibetan independence” and “United Ireland”.
- The Hebrew phrase meaning “occupied territories” and the French phrase meaning “immigration too high”.
Kauffman also described apparent inconsistencies between closely related expressions. He said the keyboard allowed “read smut” through swipe-typing but would not recognise “read gay smut” in the same way. These observations concern the keyboard’s assistance when users rely on predictive text or gestures.
David Greene of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said he could see an argument for curbing unwanted or inflammatory suggestions. He also said users should be informed about the list and given the ability to customise it.
“This is something that should not be secret,” Greene said.
