Apple’s iPhone keyboard can still accept certain phrases when they are typed manually, but it may decline to suggest them in predictive text or produce them through QuickPath swipe typing. Independent researcher Derik Kauffman identified what he calls a “gray list” in iOS language data containing political phrases, historical references and apparently ordinary wording alongside profanity, sexual terms and drug references.
The filtering affects keyboard assistance rather than text entry itself. Depending on the phrase, iOS may omit the expected completion or generate a different result when a user swipes across the keyboard. Reuters reproduced the behavior on an iPhone.
- “sleepy Joe”
- “Tibetan independence”
- “United Ireland”
- “dictator Trump”
- “right wing conspiracy”
- “Covid was a hoax”
- “Santa isn’t real”
- “iMessage isn’t working”
Some apparent inconsistencies have drawn attention. Kauffman found “bad girl” on the list but not “bad boy,” while “white man” was filtered and “black man” was not. He cautioned that an entry’s presence does not establish why Apple added it: some combinations may have been produced from templates rather than selected individually.
“It is a very mild form of censorship. But at the scale Apple operates, even a light touch is enough to have a large impact.”
Derik Kauffman
The widely cited figure of 100,000 words and phrases is Kauffman’s estimate across multiple languages, word forms and permutations, rather than the count in a single English-language file. In data he published for iOS 27, the English predictive-text list has 4,525 entries and the QuickPath list has 2,794. His site reports recovering 4,513 English phrases, with comparable lists across 27 additional languages and writing systems.
Kauffman began investigating after noticing different swipe-typing behavior for particular phrases. Using OpenAI Codex and Claude Code, he analyzed iOS language files and found a table of hashes that is checked before the keyboard presents a suggestion. Security engineer Matt Suiche independently recovered the same list and told Reuters that it was an almost perfect match.
Apple did not explain why specific phrases are included or comment directly on the list’s size. The company told Reuters that its keyboard is configured to avoid suggestions that could be inappropriate or offensive, while noting that users can manually type any phrase. The remaining question is whether Apple will provide more transparency or user controls for filters that shape its keyboard’s suggestions.
