Apple Predictive Text Blocks ‘Dictator Trump’
Apple predictive text, the system that suggests words as iPhone users type, keeps an undisclosed multilingual grey list of tens of thousands of words and phrases that its keyboard will not autocomplete or swipe-type, a researcher said on Friday. The list is not a ban. iPhone users can still type what they like in emails and texts, but the words on the list will not be suggested to them in most cases.
The flagged words are overwhelmingly vulgar or offensive, or related to drugs, sex or violence, according to researcher Derik Kauffman. But others are simply politically charged, like “dictator Trump” and “sleepy Joe”.
Hundreds of millions of people use iPhones, so Apple’s choices about suggested words could quietly shape how they write. Apple has not disclosed the list.
How the Apple predictive text grey list was found
Kauffman said he found the list in September after noticing that his swipe-typing stuttered over phrases like “bad boy” and “white man”, but not “bad girl” or “black man”.
He used OpenAI’s Codex and Anthropic’s Claude Code to hunt for the cause, and found a compendium stored “deep in the bowels” of Apple’s operating system.
He put the list at about 100,000 phrases, not counting Chinese characters.
Reuters tested a small set of the phrases on an iPhone and confirmed the problem. Trying to swipe-type “United Ireland” often produced “United Iceland”, and “white man” produced “white mean”.
“Sleepy Joe” produced “Sleepy hope”, and “Dictator Trump” came out with a lower-case “trump” and no autocomplete suggestion. Swipe-typing “read gay smut” produced “Read gay Smit”, while “read smut” worked fine.
Independent check backs the finding
Matt Suiche, an engineer at agentic AI cybersecurity company Tolmo, said he was able to recover the same grey list on his own and cross-check Kauffman’s findings against Apple’s internal data. He said he got a near-perfect match.
Other phrases kept out include “right wing conspiracy”, “Tibetan independence” and “United Ireland”. Other languages have their own lists: in Hindi, “Modi braggart” and “Rahul is Pappu” cannot be swipe-typed, while French speakers cannot swipe-type “immigration too high” and Hebrew speakers cannot swipe-type “occupied territories”.
“Every major language has some version of this,” Kauffman said.
A call for transparency
Kauffman said it was understandable that Apple wanted to stop users accidentally sending obscene or inflammatory messages. But he said the rules were applied unevenly.
“It’s a very light-touch form of censorship,” Kauffman said. “But at the scale that Apple is operating, it only takes a light touch to have a big impact.”
Apple did not comment directly on the findings, the size of the list or its reasons for flagging political terms. It said users can always type specific words and override suggestions, and that the keyboard avoids offering suggestions that might be inappropriate or offensive.
Earlier this week, a Norwegian systems administrator independently found words on Apple’s grey list, including “Al-Qaeda”, “Auschwitz” and “Hooters”.
David Greene, senior counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, called the list “creepy” but saw an argument for curbing unwanted suggestions.
“But if they are going to do it, this is something users should be really well aware of and have some ability to customise,” Greene said. “This is something that should not be secret.”
Apple has faced this problem before
Apple has run into trouble before when predictive technology suggested embarrassing text. Last year, users reported that dictating the word “racist” to their iPhones would briefly cause the word “Trump” to flash across their screens. Apple said at the time that the problem was an error and had been fixed.
The finding lands as Apple pushes deeper into AI on the iPhone. Feature Pakistan has reported on Apple’s AI smart glasses planned for 2027 and on Apple’s record quarterly revenue. The grey list shows that Apple’s software has been shaping what users type for years, through a quieter channel than its headline AI features. The iPhone itself has been in the news in Pakistan, with the iPhone duo launch in Pakistan and a durability test of the new iPhones.
What is Apple’s predictive text grey list?
A hidden list of around 100,000 words and phrases that the iPhone keyboard will not suggest through autocomplete or swipe-typing, found by researcher Derik Kauffman.
Can iPhone users still type the blocked phrases?
Yes. The list is not a ban. Users can type the words manually, but the keyboard will not suggest them or accept them easily through swipe-typing.
Which political phrases are on the list?
“Dictator Trump” and “sleepy Joe” are among them, along with “right wing conspiracy”, “Tibetan independence” and “United Ireland”, according to the researcher.
What has Apple said about the list?
Apple did not comment directly on the findings. It said users can always type specific words and override predictive text suggestions.
