Apple’s grey list: Words and phrases your iPhone won’t help you spell

Apple's iPhone predictive text has a list of more than 100,000 words and phrases that it refuses to complete, research reveals. This "grey list" contains a variety of entries, including obvious choices such as drug-related terms, sexually explicit phrases, and potentially politically charged statements. Some notable examples include the inability to autocomplete "Trayvon Martin," "Kashmir dispute," "Muslim extremist," and "male chauvinist pig."

Additionally, Apple blocks the completion of phrases in Hebrew and Arabic, such as "the occupied territories" and "the Hamas movement." The research uncovering this list was conducted by independent researcher Derik Kauffman, who noticed difficulties typing certain phrases on his iPhone. The list, encoded in Apple's operating system, sheds light on the workings of the predictive text technology, which has evolved from simple word lookups to more advanced transformer-based systems.

Despite the list's existence, users can still override autocomplete suggestions to achieve their desired meaning. Apple maintains that its keyboard is designed to avoid offering inappropriate or offensive suggestions.