- 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 10 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 stored dictionaries and language models.
The phone then tries to correctly interpret the word
or phrase you're trying to type.
So when you type "fopd" your phone changes it to "food"
because "fopd" isn't a word
but it's only one letter away from "food."
But not every example is this obvious.
- The vowels U, I, and O are very close to each other
so a word like put, pit, and pot
those, those were real challenges.
- That's Ken Kocienda, he's one of the people
who developed autocorrect for Apple.
We spoke with Ken 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 positive feelings
that people have for the 19 times 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 one
and some developers have introduced new tools
like swipe to type to make typing on a smartphone 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.
Autocorrection is not supposed to be glamorous, right?
It's just supposed to be useful.
- Autocorrect is far from perfect
but our messages would look a lot worse without it.