iPhone users rejoice! A simple workaround has been found to allow your iPhone to recognise naughty words without autocorrecting them. The hack is to add a new contact to the phone with the lowercase version of the ducking word the ducking autocorrect keeps ducking up. Wash rinse repeat for any other word the iPhone auto-correct doesn't ducking like.
<sarcasm>Alternatively, switch to a real mobile OS like Android which has entirely different ways to disrespect its users.</sarcasm>
[Or adapt the quaint example so ably employed in this story submission. --Ed.]
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iPhone Hack to Stop Ducking Around
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(Score: 4, Informative) by drussell on Friday January 25 2019, @01:54AM (4 children)
You can't just add words to the phone's dictionary like has worked fine on every phone I've used in the past 20 years from even back in the earliest T9 days?
Really, Apple? You need to add a contact?!
All my phones have always known how to spell the work fuck since the first time it popped up as dual, and they also understand when I try to type something like FreeBSD.
They even save it in the correct case, as was entered into the dictionary by simply pressing "spell"....
Fail, Apple... That is a fail.
(Score: 3, Funny) by drussell on Friday January 25 2019, @01:56AM
work^Hd
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @02:36PM (2 children)
can someone answer his question?
I dont have an apple anything myself, and thought the custom/personal dictionary would handle any problems like this.
there are many many industry jargon terms that won't in in the mass market dictionary. if we cant add new terms (or if the obscenity police are filtering the words regardless of a custom dictionary entry) that would be helpful to know going forward.
eventually i gotta get a new phone and this will influence how i expect to use it. or hold out for as long as 3g is still offered as a service type...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday January 26 2019, @10:28PM (1 child)
Last I knew, there wasn't really a way to edit a "personal dictionary" on an iPhone directly. There are various hacks and workarounds where you can input words somewhere and fix them when your phone tries to correct them, and thereby hope your phone "catches on." I haven't tried any of these recently (as I don't currently use an iPhone), but my sense was that they never worked 100%.
The hack in TFA here where you add a contact with a word or proper name you don't want to be autocorrected has been known for many years, though it seems like a desperate solution.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday January 26 2019, @10:34PM
Actually, from some searching, there appears to be a setting for you to set up custom "shortcuts" and "replacements" which can be used to curb some of iPhone's bad behavior... But my recollection trying these things years ago was again that the phone didn't always obey them.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday January 25 2019, @02:01AM (4 children)
What the eff ducking means? (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Touché) by RandomFactor on Friday January 25 2019, @02:28AM (2 children)
What the Dee...
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday January 25 2019, @04:18AM (1 child)
Shirley I didn't mean Dee.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 26 2019, @03:47AM
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Friday January 25 2019, @05:49AM
I'm getting the strong sense of being in a scene from The Good Place. I can see that this feature would be very popular there.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday January 25 2019, @03:14AM (3 children)
From TFA:
No, it's not. Turn it off. Seriously.
My first encounter with iPhone's Autocorrect happened around a decade ago, when I inherited an old iPhone from a family member (who obviously "needed" to upgrade to whatever new model du jour, and I figured I might as well try to use this expensive piece of discarded equipment).
Autocorrect lasted about a month with me. It was a month of insanity -- weeks fighting my damn phone to make it say what I wanted to. I have a reasonably large vocabulary. Forget profanity -- the iPhone would "correct" all sorts of standard English words that were simply a little more rare than the colloquial BS spouted in the average text message.
But the last straw really was the "its" problem. The iPhone simply wouldn't let me use the third person neuter pronoun "its." It would "correct" it to "it's" -- every single time. After I sent out three emails in one week where Autocorrect had created embarrassing errors that made me look like an illiterate moron, I simply turned the damn thing off.
And I've never looked back.
Autocorrect is one of those supposed "features" like "Autoformat" in MS Word. It promises to "help" you, but instead you generally get helped by it 25% of the time, and you spend the other 75% of the time fighting to fix all the stupid crap it screws up in trying to be "helpful."
Don't get me wrong: if you're used to Autocorrect, it will take a period of adjustment. If you're a poor speller, I guess you're probably out of luck. But if you actually know the English language, Autocorrect is like living with an annoying set of training wheels on your bike. Get rid of it and you will own every error you type, but at least you know it's your error.
It's basically impossible to touchtype on a small screen, so you have to look at the keyboard to get your fingers in the right place, which means you aren't as focused on seeing the text that comes out. Which is why Autocorrect is disastrous -- you're setting yourself up to have errors in the output, because you're giving up your agency to some stupid system while paying more attention to input than output. (A system that in Apple's case is deliberately impossible to tweak in any reasonable fashion.)
You need more precision to type on a phone without Autocorrect. But I adjusted relatively quickly, and this was back when iPhones were reasonably small and compact, not the behemoth mini-tablets they are today. (I haven't had an iPhone in a few years, but I turn off similar features on Android and other devices.) If my thick fingers can do it, most people can. You will have to go slower, but in my opinion it made up for all the time saved from editing and backtracking when Autocorrect would output complete nonsense, corrupting perfectly legitimate English prose and replacing it with some inane collage of textspeak phrases, often with random capitalization.
Of course, I'm also the kind of person who wrote my entire dissertation with no spellcheck (as it annoyed me so much), so take my advice with a grain of salt. But for those who are ready for a true adventure, accept the freedom and take off the training wheels. If I can write hundreds of pages and only make two spelling errors (that I found subsequently), most people can write 140 characters without Autocorrect.
And you can swear as much as you damn fucking well please.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by martyb on Friday January 25 2019, @05:51AM
Would have upmodded you, but you were already at the limit. But I am in full agreement with what you posted and have only one thing to add. In the course of my using computers since '72, I've had occasion to use tools that fell into the background and made my tasks so much easier. And, I've had others that performed a very useful task but were a total pain every moment I waged battle with it. Hence this summation:
=)
Wit is intellect, dancing. I'm too old to act my age. Life is too important to take myself seriously.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Friday January 25 2019, @12:52PM (1 child)
First thing I did when I got my iPhone was ask my son -- who is very smart with Cyber -- to turn off Auttocorrect. Very happy w/result!!
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 26 2019, @04:14AM
(emphasis added)
You just might want to reconsider that decision. =)
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @04:07AM (2 children)
Hug off, Apple!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @04:23AM
You need to take a pill
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @08:47PM
You mean "forget you Apple"
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Friday January 25 2019, @04:44AM (2 children)
Not to use i.
Not that we needed any more reasons.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Friday January 25 2019, @04:45AM (1 child)
s/i./i[crap]/
I keep forgetting that angle brackets are interpreted. Sigh. I need some sleep.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @04:50AM
There [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @11:07AM
They just know best, don't they?
(Score: 2) by aclarke on Friday January 25 2019, @02:30PM
I can swear in Messages. I just tested. I typed "fucking" into a sentence and iOS didn't auto"correct" me. I had to test that as I don't generally type "bad words" into my phone, but it works just fine if I want to. I'm not sure what this article's on about.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday January 25 2019, @03:35PM (2 children)
I'm gonna fuck you up.
I am gonna cut your motherfucking cock off.
--
Posted From My iPhone
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @03:39PM
Aye my iPhone also says fuck and fucking just fine. You just have to add it to the custom words list
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @03:59PM
I'm gonna fuck you up.
--
Posted By My iPhone
(Score: 2) by chewbacon on Friday January 25 2019, @07:11PM
Old news, old hack. Nice jab at Apple from an Fandroid.