Everyone knows how ducking frustrating it can be trying to swear in an iPhone message, but did you know that Apple’s prudishness goes well beyond just trying to steer you away from using naughty words? Beyond the words it actively autocorrects to something else, new research suggests that iOS maintains what researcher Derik Kauffman calls a “gray list”—phrases that it will never suggest, no matter how often you type them, and will often refuse to recognize when you use swipe typing.

According to an interview with Reuters, Kauffman started looking into the possibility that his phone was steering him away from using words and phrases after “noticing that his swipe typing—the practice of gliding a finger back and forth over a keyboard rather than pecking out each word individually—would stutter over certain phrases.” Using “a combination of OpenAI’s Codex and Anthropic’s Claude Code”—sigh—Kauffman discovered the list, which he’s published on a site called Swipeblocked.

The site explains that if a word or phrase is on the list, “Predictive text never offers a phrase on the list, even when it’s the obvious next word… [and] swipe typing … picks another word, sometimes an implausible one, and can change a word you already entered.” Kauffman calls the list a “gray list” rather than a blacklist because iOS won’t autocorrect words typed out individually—so there’s no “ugh I hate that ducking aunt”—but it also won’t help you use them.

Apple told Reuters that its keyboard is designed to avoid offering potentially inappropriate or offensive suggestions, but declined to explain why particular phrases were on the list.

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