Do you find your iPhone suggesting words as you try to type something? This is happening due to the predictive text feature in iOS. In this post we will show you how to disable predictive text suggestions on your iPhone and iPad, in case these suggestions are distracting you.
Predictive Text on iPhone
As you can guess from the name, Predictive Text Feature on your iPhone is designed to speed up your typing by offering word suggestions that iOS thinks you are going to type next.
These predictive text suggestions are based on data collected from your past conversations and writing style.
Those who have used this feature for a while are often surprised to notice predictive text suggestions adjusting automatically to their communicating style with a particular contact.
While this sounds creepy, there is nothing to worry about, the data used for providing predictive text suggestions is stored on your own iPhone and never transferred to Apple servers.
Why You May Want to Turn Off Predictive Text Suggestions
Depending on your approach, you may consider predictive word suggestions on iPhone as being quite helpful in accomplishing your typing tasks, or you may want to disable this feature due to following reasons.
1. You feel that predictive text suggestions are interfering with your thought flow.
2. You feel that predictive text suggestions are actually making you write in a particular pattern.
3. You love typing and do not find these word suggestions as being useful at all.
4. You do not want your phone to learn your way of thinking and writing style.
Whatever maybe the reasons, it is really easy to disable predictive text suggestions on your iPhone, either for a short time (temporary basis) or even permanently.
Turn Off Predictive Text Suggestions on iPhone Temporarily
Follow the steps below to turn off predictive text on your iPhone on a temporary basis.
1. Tap on iMessage app from the home screen of your iPhone
2. Open up a Conversation and tap on iMessage to bring up your iPhone’s virtual keyboard.
3. Start to type something – You will see suggested predictive text appearing on the grey bar above the first row of keyboard (See image below).
4. Now, tap and hold on one of the predictive text suggestions and drag it downwards. For example, in the above image you can tap and hold the suggested word “Hey” and just drag it towards the first row of the keyboard.
5. The predictive text bar will immediately shrink and you will see a white bar in the middle (See image below).
Now you can continue typing without being bothered by predictive text suggestions for the rest of your conversation. At any time, you can just swipe the white bar up to get back the text suggestions, in case you do decide to make use of the Predictive Text Suggestions on your iPhone.
Permanently Disable Predictive Text on iPhone
In case you are pretty sure and decided about it, you can completely disable predictive text suggestions on your iPhone by following these steps.
1. Tap on Settings app
2. Tap on General.
3. Scroll down and tap on Keyboard.
4. Simply toggle OFF Predictive by tapping on it (Turns white from green in OFF position)
With these steps your iPhone will never bother you with predictive text suggestions on any app that you might be using at any time on your iPhone.