Tired of your phone sabotaging your texts? Hitting all buttons right on a tiny touch screen is hard enough on its own, and it becomes a real pain in the neck when you have to watch out for autocorrect typos too. No wonder you can find all kinds of embarrassing stories of autocorrect fails online - from ones where people’s phones autocorrected castle with casket to ones that switched up cooperation with copulation (whoops).
Instead of rendering messaging apps faster and easier, autocorrect can hinder communication and make you dread its very presence on your mobile device. Fortunately, smartphone developers allow users to customize or even fully disable autocorrect on both iPhones and Android phones.
Choose the operating system below, and learn to customize autocorrect settings on your smartphone.
By default, most Android devices come with Google's keyboard app called Gboard. If you didn’t change your keyboard app or you know you’re using Gboard, follow the instructions below to customize the autocorrect settings on your Android device.
How to access autocorrect settings:
Open the Settings App on your smartphone’s main menu and then proceed to System > Languages & Input > Keyboards > Gboard.
When you reach the Gboard Settings, open Text Correction and switch OFF the toggle button next to Auto-Correction.
Decided to turn the autocorrect back on? Revisit the same location in the settings and switch the toggle button back to the ON position.
If you're using a different type of keyboard (such as the Samsung Keyboard app that comes pre-installed on Samsung smartphones), you might find that the Auto-Correction settings vary slightly. In any case, the keyboard settings should always appear under Keyboard in the Languages & Input section of System Settings.
The video below shows how to enable and disable Auto-Correction on a Samsung phone:
Unlike Auto-Correct, Spell Checker won’t change the words you typed out. Instead, it will flag the words by underlining them with a red squiggly line. It will help you avoid potential typos; tap on the underlined word, and Spell Checker will show you word suggestions.
Spell Checker is more useful and less intrusive. However, some people choose to disable it too. To do so, go to System > Languages & Input > Keyboards > Spell Checker and turn OFF the toggle button next to Use Spell Checker.
If you prefer to keep Auto-Correction on, you can add custom words to your keyboard dictionary, and they won’t be corrected when you type. This is especially helpful with proper names that often get flagged and corrected.
In the same menu, you can also add abbreviations that will be automatically corrected when you type them. For example, you can add the TTYL abbreviation, and it will show up as “Talk to you later” as you type it out in messages or emails.
To customize your dictionary, Open Settings > System > Languages & Input > Personal Dictionary and add new words or abbreviations by tapping the + button and typing in the new word.
In the same menu, you can select words and abbreviations to delete.
Your iPhone allows you to alter a wide range of useful keyboard settings. You can enable or disable autocorrection of words and phrases, set up a spelling checker, customize your phone's dictionary, and add shortcuts to words and phrases you often. Below you can find step-by-step instructions for all of these features.
Open the Settings App > go to General > Keyboards, and switch OFF the toggle button next to Autocorrection.
The next time you start typing on your phone, words in the keyboard’s dictionary will no longer be altered. Your phone will still underline misspelled words. For a visual demonstration, watch the following video.
To get rid of the red squiggly lines too, you’ll also need to disable Spell Check. We explain how to do so below.
Spell check is generally more helpful than autocorrect, even though it takes a bit more time to work with it. When the red line appears under a word, tap it, and a few spelling suggestions will appear. A second tap on the correctly spelled word will correct the initial erroneous spelling.
How to disable Spell Check
To deactivate the Spell Check, go back to the Keyboard Settings and toggle OFF the button next to Check Spelling. You can also alter word capitalization and other keyboard settings in this menu.
If you’d like to keep autocorrect on but disable annoying corrections, such as names or word pairs like bit and bat, you can easily add custom words to the iPhone keyboard dictionary. This way, they won’t be replaced or flagged by Autocorrect or Spell Check. To do so, open the Keyboard Settings, find Text Replacement, and tap the + icon. Add the word of your choice and click Save (you can keep the Shortcut box empty).
In the same menu, you can also create a shortcut that will be converted to the full word. To use this feature, type in the full word in the Text Replacement menu and then add the shortcut. For instance, you can like your initials and your full name, and every time you type the initials while writing a message, your full name will appear in the text.
To correct or delete words in your dictionary, open the Text Replacement menu, tap on individual words and phrases, and follow the prompts to delete and adjust them to something else.
References: PCMag, Lifewire, Makeuseof
