iOS: How to Convince Ducking Autocorrect You Don’t Mean Duck

Jeff Gamet

1 minute read
| Tips
How to use Contacts to work around autocorrect issues
Sometimes you just don't mean "duck" despite what autocorrect thinks

Our iPhones are great at making our lives easier, but sometimes autocorrect just gets it wrong. So ducking wrong, in fact, that it’s really ducking annoying. Turns out there’s a workaround that lets you trick your iPhone or iPad into leaving the word you really typed instead of changing it to “duck.”

How to use Contacts to work around autocorrect issues
Sometimes you just don’t mean “duck” despite what autocorrect thinks

Before we get started, fair warning: The Mac Observer usually doesn’t include words in articles that might get our mouths washed out with soap unless they’re part of a relevant quote or necessary in some other important way. In other words, we typically don’t drop f-bombs. Today, however, it’s pretty much the point because lots of people do use words you can’t say on prime time television—and it’s annoying when your iPhone insists on changing what you type into the common name for Anas Platyrhynchos.

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New Contact with autocorrect workaround words as the name
Start by making a new Contact where the name is the words you don’t want autocorrect changing

With that out of the way, here’s how to trick your iPhone into not changing “fuck” into “duck” every time you type it: Make a new contact using the words you don’t want your iPhone to autocorrect. I went with “fucking” for the first name and “fuck” for the last. I added a picture of a duck as the Contact photo, too, because I just couldn’t not do it.

Set words you don't want autocorrect to change as a Contact's name
Once the words you want are a Contact name they’re autocorrect-proof

You can do the same with other words, too, and since iOS sees names in your Contacts as legit spellings they’ll stay just as you type them. That means no more ducking autocorrect screwing up your important messages, and no more retyping the same ducking word over and over.

Thanks to Twitter user @thrasherxy for the ducking great idea.

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  1. petek Subscriber 10 years ago

    @ furbies
    No that will not happen. Auto correct will not correct duck it will only replace f__k with f__k because f__k is the word you have set up to be replaced, not duck.

    Reply
  2. furbies Subscriber 10 years ago

    @petek

    Only problem with your solution is if Jeff types peking duck and gets autocorrected to peking f__k….

    Reply
  3. petek Subscriber 10 years ago

    An easier way is to go to Settings/General/Keyboard/Text Replacement then add a new text to be replaced. Enter the word in the left and right columns and save. That way auto correct will replace the “word” with the “word”.

    Reply
  4. xmattingly Subscriber 10 years ago

    LOL! Best. Advice. Ever. ??

    Reply
  5. Lee Dronick Subscriber 10 years ago

    Good tip! And not just for the F word and not just for Autocorrect, it seems to also work with Siri. Our street intersects with Dewsbury which Autocorrect and Siri which is changed to Duesberry.

    Reply

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