Reset AutoCorrect on iPhone or iPad to Fix Improper Word Corrections

Autocorrect in iOS is pretty smart and usually gets things right, it also learns your habits and frequently typed words and will start autocorrecting what you type to the words you have used in the past. This can be a blessing and a curse, because if you accidentally corrected a word to a wrong one or a typo, the iPad/iPhone dictionary will want to use that new erroneous word as the correction. The solution to that problem is to reset autocorrect by clearing out the keyboard dictionary.

Resetting the auto-correct keyboard dictionary is the same on all versions of iOS and on the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Here’s what you will want to do:

How to Reset the Auto-Correct Dictionary in iOS

1. Open the “Settings” app and tap on “General”
2. Tap “Reset” and then choose “Reset Keyboard Dictionary”, enter the device passcode and confirm the keyboard dictionary reset when asked

This exists in all versions of iOS, this is what the target dictionary reset setting looks like in modern iOS versions as shown on an iPhone:

Here is what the keyboard autocorrection dictionary reset option looks like on an iPad in prior iOS versions:

This clears out the entire autocorrect and keyboard dictionary letting you start over from scratch. Open up Notes or any other app that lets you type and you can start teaching iOS the proper words again.

If you get too fed up with iOS autocorrect, you can always turn it off too, but typically a dictionary reset is adequate to resolve consistently improper corrections.

Contrary to some claims, you do not need to reset the iPhone or iPad to factory defaults to fix improper word corrections, though if you had a great dictionary before it got messed up you can restore from a previous backup to get the better autocorrect dictionary back.

There are also some suggestions that resetting Keyboard Dictionary helps with Dictation accuracy as well if it’s learned the wrong words, though we haven’t been able to verify that completely.

On a related note, a hilarious horribly no-good dirty prank to play on friends is messing with their iPhone or iPads auto-correct dictionary, this causes autocorrect to replace a proper word with a wrong word. Don’t do that though.