iPhone Typos? It's Not Just You – The iOS Keyboard Is Broken [video]

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Perceived Keyboard Regression

  • Many report a sharp increase in typos in recent iOS versions, especially after the “glass”/iOS 26 update, on both small (SE, mini) and large phones.
  • Users describe keys visually highlighting correctly while nearby letters are inserted, making them question their own motor skills or aging.
  • Some note this didn’t happen on early iPhones or even a 2007 iPod touch, which they recall as nearly error‑free.

Autocorrect, Prediction & “Look‑Behind” Editing

  • Aggressive “look‑behind” correction is a major source of anger: the OS silently changes words several tokens back after you type a new one.
  • Autocorrect often turns correct words into nonsensical or rare ones, and can fight repeated attempts to enter the desired word.
  • A long‑standing bug where words get duplicated (“duplicateduplicate”) still appears for some.
  • Safety/content filters: people struggle to type phrases like “kill myself,” profanity, or certain racial terms, while the system happily suggests more offensive alternatives in other languages.

Slide‑to‑Type, Hitboxes & Possible Technical Causes

  • One camp blames slide‑to‑type: with it enabled, hitboxes are dynamically resized and presses are registered on finger‑up, so small slides can cause wrong letters despite the popup showing the “right” key.
  • Others with slide‑to‑type disabled still see issues and point out the video shows “U” highlighted while a different character is committed, suggesting a deeper bug.
  • Some mention invisible hitbox reshaping and prediction based on common word sequences, which may now be tuned too aggressively.

Editing & Cursor Control

  • Editing text is widely described as “a nightmare”: getting the cursor into the middle of a word, dismissing selection popups, or undoing a wrong correction is slow and error‑prone.
  • The space‑bar cursor‑move gesture helps some, but fails in numeric/URL fields and can itself misplace the cursor.

Comparisons, Alternatives & Multilingual Pain

  • Many who moved from Android praise older Android keyboards (Swype, early SwiftKey, Gboard on Pixels) as far superior, especially for swipe and next‑word prediction.
  • Others say Android keyboards have also degraded in recent years, with similar overzealous ML and look‑behind behavior.
  • Multilingual users on both platforms report severe regressions: the keyboard latches onto the “wrong” language after a single foreign word, splits compounds, and never seems to learn domain‑specific or community slang.

Workarounds, Third‑Party Keyboards & Trust

  • Common coping strategies: disabling autocorrect/prediction, turning off slide‑to‑type, using dictation, external Bluetooth keyboards, or niche third‑party keyboards (T9‑style, swipe‑only, open source).
  • On iOS, third‑party keyboards are hampered by platform limits, stability issues, and privacy concerns (fear of keylogging or cloud training), though some run without “full access.”

Broader iOS / Software‑Quality Concerns

  • The keyboard is framed as one example of a wider iOS decline: UI jank, Safari rendering bugs, notification confusion, call and GPS issues, awkward new layouts (Phone, Safari, Alarms), and “glass” visuals that hurt usability.
  • Several threads question modern software incentives: focus on new features, design fashion, and AI overlays rather than fixing regressions; lack of meaningful user choice due to forced updates, app stores, and ecosystem lock‑in.
  • Some lament the shift from human‑factors/HCI to “UX” driven by business metrics, A/B tests, and dark patterns, with quality and user control steadily eroded.