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If you regularly switch languages or, even worse, use multiple languages in the same messages, autocorrect gets in the way more than it helps. In monolingual contexts it’s almost always set to the wrong language (based on the one used previously) and what comes out is just a jumble. In multilingual contexts you just spend as much time on switching the keyboard language as on the actual typing.

Also, I’m not sure how it is today, but 5-8 years ago I knew more words in my native language than iOS autocorrect and got tired of it “fixing” them.

I type on Android in English and occasionally German and rarely Spanish, and it's not too bad over there.

Android and iOS have had cross-language autocorrect for quite a while now. You don’t need to be on the ‘right’ keyboard anymore.

They have the feature, sure, whether it works properly for the languages you are using is another thing altogether.

Somewhat close languages (french/english) are often not great, and adding CJK with anything other than english to the mix is also a recipe for a bad experience.

Even for just English, it gets some words wrong constantly for me. I would love to be able to watch someone type in their phone to see if I'm just using it wrong

Well, maybe it’s just personal preference, but I use Dutch and English (a closer language pair than FR/EN) on Android and iPadOS, and it works great for me.

Of course, you still need to switch for CJK languages (because they need an IME), but that’s a given.

To your side note: did you know you can use the iOS keyboards space bar as touch pad control for the text cursor? Just press and hold. That makes positioning the cursor very easy.

FWIW the default soft keyboard on Android functions the same way. Remembering to use it is the big trick!

This is true, but the UX is much nicer on iOS.

I disagree, I find the total keyboard experience much better on Android.

To each their own, obviously. But... yeah, IMO it's pretty bad on Apple.

I do, but it’s janky enough that I don’t actually like it very much, and it hasn’t achieved muscle memory status. It seemed to work better when it was Force Touch based (before they removed Force Touch)… the spacebar technique just doesn’t seem to activate reliably for me.

My problem with iOS autocorrect is that when I type a technical word that it doesn't understand, as soon I hit space and it autocorrects, even if I immediately backspace, the original word is GONE. If someone was dictating something to me and I was transcribing, too bad, I have to ask them to repeat it.

Android will autocorrect but if you immediately backspace, it reverts to the original. I didn't realize how much I relied on this function until it was absent.

I generally can predict the words it isn’t going to understand, and just make an effort to type those more carefully. The literal letters you typed so far is typically the leftmost option in the word list just above the keyboard. 98% of the time I can just plow right through mashing my fingers vaguely near the keys, the other 2% I just type slow and use the top left word instead of the space bar.

> I generally can predict the words it isn’t going to understand

By the time I have to anticipate the machine mis-fixing my not-mistakes, I think we're well into the-machine-is-wrong territory.

I totally agree with your general point, but in case you haven’t tried it, disabling “Slide to type” massively improves iOS keyboard accuracy.

(Picked up the tip from another thread on here about how sloppy the iOS keyboard is, and have subjectively found it to be a big improvement.)

I thought "slide to type" was default off--and at least I was sure it was off at some point for me. But your message prompted me to check and it was on. Thanks!

For me, autocorrect is just not worth it. I'd rather fix my own mistakes than supervise/fight a language model. To me, the latter takes much more effort. And once I disabled AI my typing accuracy (and spelling ability!) improved, so that it became a non-issue.

I find the Android default keyboard a lot easier to use than the iOS one. But then, I've used Android a lot more (on the phone) and use iOS only on the tablet.

Trying to tap where you want the cursor to go is madness - hold the space bar and drive the cursor to where you want it.

> I get confused by people who disable autocorrect

I want to speak with my own voice, not Apple's autocorrect voice. Doubly so in casual jokey chats. I do agree that it's unusable without it, but I ducking hate it.

They fixed the thing that always autocorrects away from swear words in the 2023 release FYI (maybe 2022, I can’t remember.) They made a special point of mentioning it at WWDC.

I can now type “fucking” reliably without it replacing it.

Rightyho, now for all the other things, like rightyho. Or a thousand other smallish things that are hard to write the way I want to.