have you ever tried typing something but
your phone keeps changing it to
something else
this ducking keyboard can be so
frustrating it can seem like autocorrect
is working against you instead of
helping you but the iPhone has had
autocorrect for over ten years why does
it still suck whether you're on iPhone
or Android using the default keyboard or
a third-party app you deal with
autocorrect every single day usually it
works great but sometimes it completely
refuses to understand what you typed to
figure out what's happening we have to
understand how autocorrect works when
you type something on a phone there's a
lot of work going on in the background
the phone analyzes your input and
compares it to store dictionaries and
language models the phone then tries to
correctly interpret the word or phrase
you're trying to type so when you tie it
popped your phone changes it to food
because fob isn't a word but it's only
one letter away from food but not every
example is this obvious the vowels UI
and O are very close to each other so
word like put pit and pot those those
were real challenges that's kinkou
Shinda he's one of the people who
developed autocorrect for Apple we spoke
with Kim to find out what's happening
inside of autocorrect my job was to come
up with a way to make speedy and
accurate typing possible on a sheet of
glass the hardest part isn't correcting
spelling or grammar it's interpreting
what you meant to say from what you
wrote and autocorrect is actually pretty
good at this but users tend to notice
autocorrect only when it makes mistakes
if it does what it's supposed to do
19 times and then that 20th time it
makes a mistake
that is either distracting or
embarrassing that one mistake wipes out
the the positive feelings that people
have for the 19
where it just worked this is especially
obvious when autocorrect leads to
unwanted changes sometimes it can feel
like you're fighting against your
keyboard mostly people complain about
how autocorrect gets in the way of their
swearing the ducking keyboard the iPhone
keyboard will let you swear it just
wants to prevent you from accidentally
sending a word that you didn't mean to
send it might seem like you're always
wrestling with autocorrect but you can
take control of your dictionary on iOS
go into settings general keyboard and
then tap add shortcut or text
replacement here you can add a new word
or a shortcut that fills in a word when
you type a few letters you can Google
around to find out how to add words to
the various versions of Android or
third-party keyboards so you might still
think autocorrect sucks but it's
actually gotten a lot better since
version 1 and some developers have
introduced new tools like swipe too
tight to make typing on a smart phone
easier in the future
machine learning might create an
autocorrect that's more accurate than
ever but whatever the technology is we
can't lose sight of the original goal of
autocorrect the goal that I like to
think about for the product is for it to
have the software melt away all the
correction is not supposed to be
glamorous it's just supposed to be
useful autocorrect is far from perfect
but our messages would look a lot worse
without it