4 ms·

Kind of related, but has anyone else noticed iOS text autocorrect has gotten notably worse over the years?

deergomoo 5y ago
I believe at some point in the last couple of years (iOS 13 maybe?) they switched to a machine learning-based system and yes, it's been significantly worse since. I cannot put into words just how frustrating it is to have the device change a correctly spelled, correctly chosen word because it thinks I may have meant something else. Double points if I backspace to change it back and it re-"corrects" me again.
- rusk 5y ago
  It just refuses to learn! This is inarguably worse than what we had with T9 like 20 years ago, all running without cloud support on a limiting embedded platform.
- solarkraft 5y ago
  Love it when it replaces a correctly chosen word while swipe-typing the next few ones because it would fit better in the new context. Boggles my mind how you can let something like that into prod. The things it leads to are - Errors that make the message hard to understand that are (here it replaced “that” with “they and “here” with “get”) only caught while proof-reading or not at all - Having to go back and re-type 3 words for correction. I check the word I just swiped for misrecognition, not one that was previously correctly recognized, god damn it. The actual success rate of that piece of garbage is maybe 5%. That said: Of course I’m happy they have a swipe feature at all, albeit significantly worse than Google’s (about on par with Microsoft’s). But you don’t have to make the feature intentionally worse, do you?
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  The re-correction thing is unacceptable, imho. No predictive text algorithm will be perfect, but why in holy hell would they let it ignore explicit correction is beyond me.
- throwaddzuzxd 5y ago
  > Double points if I backspace to change it back and it re-"corrects" me again. That's just awful design. Another quirk is that it can autocorrect the last word you typed when you press "send". Sometimes I proofread myself and still end up bitten by the autocorrect because it changed something when I pressed "send". On Android when you backspace once after an autocorrect it reverts the autocorrect. It's not great but still better than what iOS does.
  - davidbarker 5y ago
    This happens to me, too. It’s particularly annoying when writing a tweet. I’ll correct a misspelling and — presumably as the text field loses focus when I tap on the “Tweet” button — it’ll change the word back to the misspelled version and use that for the tweet text.
rusk 5y ago
Yes https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252621788?answerId=255427949022&replyId=255427949022 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252621788?answerId=2554... If you’re wondering why “Access is denied” then that should inform you about how Apple deal with negative customer feedback these days.
webmobdev 5y ago
I always turn off this feature in both Android / iDevices because it can act like a keylogger - the Terms of Services for this allow both Google and Apple to "collect data to improve their services".

I believe at some point in the last couple of years (iOS 13 maybe?) they switched to a machine learning-based system and yes, it's been significantly worse since. I cannot put into words just how frustrating it is to have the device change a correctly spelled, correctly chosen word because it thinks I may have meant something else. Double points if I backspace to change it back and it re-"corrects" me again.

rusk 5y ago
It just refuses to learn! This is inarguably worse than what we had with T9 like 20 years ago, all running without cloud support on a limiting embedded platform.
solarkraft 5y ago
Love it when it replaces a correctly chosen word while swipe-typing the next few ones because it would fit better in the new context. Boggles my mind how you can let something like that into prod. The things it leads to are - Errors that make the message hard to understand that are (here it replaced “that” with “they and “here” with “get”) only caught while proof-reading or not at all - Having to go back and re-type 3 words for correction. I check the word I just swiped for misrecognition, not one that was previously correctly recognized, god damn it. The actual success rate of that piece of garbage is maybe 5%. That said: Of course I’m happy they have a swipe feature at all, albeit significantly worse than Google’s (about on par with Microsoft’s). But you don’t have to make the feature intentionally worse, do you?
ashtonkem 5y ago
The re-correction thing is unacceptable, imho. No predictive text algorithm will be perfect, but why in holy hell would they let it ignore explicit correction is beyond me.
throwaddzuzxd 5y ago
> Double points if I backspace to change it back and it re-"corrects" me again. That's just awful design. Another quirk is that it can autocorrect the last word you typed when you press "send". Sometimes I proofread myself and still end up bitten by the autocorrect because it changed something when I pressed "send". On Android when you backspace once after an autocorrect it reverts the autocorrect. It's not great but still better than what iOS does.
- davidbarker 5y ago
  This happens to me, too. It’s particularly annoying when writing a tweet. I’ll correct a misspelling and — presumably as the text field loses focus when I tap on the “Tweet” button — it’ll change the word back to the misspelled version and use that for the tweet text.

rusk 5y ago

Yes https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252621788?answerId=255427949022&replyId=255427949022 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252621788?answerId=2554... If you’re wondering why “Access is denied” then that should inform you about how Apple deal with negative customer feedback these days.

webmobdev 5y ago

I always turn off this feature in both Android / iDevices because it can act like a keylogger - the Terms of Services for this allow both Google and Apple to "collect data to improve their services".