A researcher’s catalog of 4,513 recovered English phrases in Apple’s iPhone keyboard data has raised questions about how predictive features handle political language, although the entries do not explain why they were added.
Independent researcher Derik Kauffman published the catalog through his Swipeblocked project after examining Apple keyboard files and language data served in October 2026. The project lists recovered phrases in English and has catalogs for 27 other languages and scripts. Kauffman left out entries he could not decode, so the published lists are incomplete.
Examples include “dictator Trump,” “sleepy Joe,” “Tibetan independence” and “United Ireland.” Kauffman’s method notes describe tables of 32-bit fingerprints. He says the keyboard compares proposed word sequences with those tables and suppresses a candidate when it finds a match. Users can still enter phrases by tapping each letter.
Swipeblocked cautions that a phrase’s presence in a data table alone does not show how it will appear on screen. The project says only selected entries were tested on iPhones and in the iOS Simulator. Its lists also do not establish why Apple included a particular phrase.
Kauffman estimated that the broader collection contains about 100,000 words, phrases and variations, excluding Chinese characters, Reuters reported. That is his estimate, not an Apple figure.
Reuters reported results from its own tests of a small selection on an iPhone. “Sleepy Joe” produced “Sleepy hope,” while “United Ireland” often produced “United Iceland.” “Dictator Trump” could be swipe-typed, but “Trump” appeared in lowercase and the keyboard did not suggest the full phrase in autocomplete.
Apple told Reuters that its keyboard is designed to avoid suggestions that may be inappropriate or offensive. The company said users can type words themselves and override predictions, but did not explain the political entries. Apple’s support instructions say users can dismiss a suggestion by continuing to type or turn off predictive text and inline predictions in Keyboard settings.
Reuters also recalled a 2025 dictation problem in which some users said “Trump” briefly appeared when they dictated “racist.” Apple said the behavior was an error and had been fixed.
