Predictive Text Detox: Unplugging the Suggestions in iOS

In this episode, Thomas Domville demonstrates how to enable or disable predictive text and inline predictive text on iOS. Predictive text allows you to write entire sentences with just a few taps. As you type, suggested words, emoji, and information appear above the onscreen keyboard. You can double tap a suggestion to apply it. Inline predictions complete the word or phrase you’re currently typing, appearing in gray text. To accept an inline prediction, double tap the Space bar; to reject it, keep typing. You can manage predictive text settings in Keyboard settings on your iPhone 12 or newer models running iOS 17 or later versions.

Open Settings on your iPhone.
Scroll down and double tap on General.
Double tap Keyboard.
Double tap the Predictive switch to enable or disable predictive text.
To manage inline predictive text, ensure that the Predictive switch is enabled or disabled.
While typing, you’ll see inline predictions. To accept a suggestion, double tap the Space bar; to reject it, keep typing.

transcription:
Disclaimer: This transcript is generated by AIKO, an automated transcription service. It is not edited or formatted, and it may not accurately capture the speakers’ names, voices, or content.

Hello and welcome.

My name is Thomas Donville also known as AnonyMouse.

Now every so often when I am composing an email or I'm trying to send off a text to a friend or family whatever that might be and I'm using the keyboard as I'm typing there is something called predictive text that will pop up so it tries to predict what you are going to spell out and this feature what this does it tries to help you shorten your typing that you have to do so you just find the various words on top of your keyboard tap on that and it selects that then they have this inline predictive text now which is a newer feature which takes it a next step that allows you to highlight within the text itself and allows you to choose those words but for me those are distracting I am trying to focus and I am NOT a multitasker as I would love to be but as I'm typing along I it just bothers me hearing these words pop up and they don't help me at all I want to kind of stay focused and type in what I want so I'm going to show you how you can turn those features off if you are interested in doing so and if you are distracted like I am when those things come up I'm also going to show you some pointers and advice some other things you can turn off as well what they call features and for some may be distracting to you as well or something that drives you bonkers so do in order to go and change this settings we are going to head over to the native settings itself settings double tap to open now that you located the settings let's do one finger double tap to open this up settings now you are going to need to swipe to the right until we get to something called general general button and we are going to do one finger double tap here about button and now we are looking for something called keyboard so swipe to the right until you get to keyboard keyboard button and at last we are here one finger double tap on keyboard keyboards to button now the easiest way to get to the area that we need to do is set your rotor to headings and go to the first heading all keyboards heading and now what we're looking for is predictive text so swipe to the right a couple times and you will find the predictive text predictive text switch button on double tap to toggle setting and at last we are here at the two items that I want you to focus on first one is predictive text and if you swipe to the right show predictions in line switch button on double tap to toggle setting and then we have the in line predictive text so the nice part here is that you're able to select which of the two or both that you can turn off when it comes to predictive text so if the inline predictive text is driving you bonkers all you have to do is do one finger double tap to disable this feature off now I have that turned off let's go back left here predictive text switch button on double tap to toggle setting now if you like that feature in particular we can keep that on but in my case I'm gonna go ahead and just turn this off entirely I don't use this at all and if you do so now if you turn this one off it will also automatically turn off the inline predictive text automatically so this is one place you can disable both if you want or if you just want to disable inline you have that option so as I turn this off one finger double tap off now you'll notice that you swipe right the inline predictive text is also disappeared and is turned off automatically now as a bonus as I promise here there are other features that Apple seems to want to kind of push on you and thinking that you need now this will definitely will vary by mileage in terms of what you want out of when you come to type in things so as you remember let's go to the heading there so use your rotor find the heading and swipe up all keyboards heading and if you call we have the all keyboard let me show you some other things here that you might want to consider turning off or on or just keeping the way they are auto capitalization switch button on if you like that to up auto capitalize as you're typing so you don't have to keep hitting that shift key it does save some time I like this feature but I'm gonna keep that on but some people I can understand why they don't so you can go ahead and do one finger double tap turn that off let's go to the right here auto correction switch button on auto correction it is this is also another feature that kind of push on you if you feel like you are really good about typing and putting punctuation grammar and things like that you probably want to turn that off sometimes that people will find that it does things differently than you expected and it's not what I want I want more control what I typed double tap that to turn that off I am okay with this I'm gonna go ahead and leave this on now let's go to the right and we're gonna go over predictive text and then we'll go to the next item predictive text switch button off check spelling switch button on double tap to toggle setting if you're not a good speller well you might want to consider leaving this on if you feel like I am good at this I don't need it to correct what I did wrong and it can be annoying at times because I will put in something that I did mean to spell and I have to go back and re-correct what it thought I was trying to spell last so at times I can understand why you wouldn't want to turn this off enable caps lock switch button on smart punctuation switch button on double tap to toggle setting and lastly we have the smart punctuation correction done for you I would turn this option off so those are some of the features that I want to show you on top of the predictive text features that Apple has to use to choose from well the beautiful part I love that they separated a lot of these different things so you have the power at your fingers what you want to be helped with and what items you don't want to be helped with but now with a predictive text off now I can type freely I don't have the distraction anymore and is trying to tell me what word I think I needed but which I don't whatever not predictive text is now off and with the option if you just want the inline turned off but keep the predictive text there so you can still be able to access towards the top part of your keyboard and whatnot so I hope these were very helpful and for something for you to decide and to set for yourself all right well my name is Thomas Donville also known as AnonyMouse until next time bye