Apple’s iPhone Keyboard Has A Secret Blocklist. ‘Dictator Trump’ And ‘Sleepy Joe’ Are On It.

Apple's iPhone keyboard has an undisclosed list of roughly 100,000 words and phrases that it generally avoids suggesting or completing, including political expressions such as "Dictator Trump" and "Sleepy Joe," according to research published Friday.

The restrictions affect predictive text and swipe-typing, which allows users to enter words by sliding a finger across the keyboard. They do not prevent anyone from manually typing the expressions, but they can make certain phrases considerably harder to enter using the keyboard's automated features.

The list was uncovered by independent researcher Derik Kauffman, who published the findings on a website called Swipeblocked. While many of the restricted expressions involve profanity, drugs, sex or violence, others relate to politics, historical events and public figures.

Among the English-language entries are "right wing conspiracy," "Tibetan independence," "United Ireland" and "make America great again." The list also contains everyday expressions such as "Santa isn't real" and "iMessage isn't working."

Kauffman's published research identifies 4,513 recovered English phrases, with similar restrictions appearing across 27 other languages and scripts. He estimates that the broader collection contains approximately 100,000 entries and variations, although the way those entries are counted can affect the total.

Apple has not publicly explained how it selects the phrases or why particular political expressions are included.

In a response obtained by Reuters, Apple said its keyboard was designed to avoid suggesting potentially inappropriate or offensive language. The company emphasized that users could still type any words they wanted and override predictive suggestions.

Apple did not directly address questions about the size or composition of the list, or explain why certain political phrases were restricted.

The differences become apparent when users try to enter some of the expressions using swipe-typing.

The outlet tested several phrases identified by Kauffman and found that the keyboard often substituted unexpected words. "Sleepy Joe" became "Sleepy hope," while attempts to enter "United Ireland" frequently produced "United Iceland."

The phrase "Dictator Trump" could be entered through swipe-typing, but the keyboard used a lowercase "trump" and did not offer the full expression through autocomplete. Instead, it suggested "dictator trumps."

Other restrictions appear inconsistent. Kauffman's research found that the keyboard could produce "bad boy" but struggled with "bad girl." Similarly, "read smut" could be swipe-typed, while "read gay smut" could not.

The restrictions extend beyond English. The published multilingual data includes Hindi expressions involving Indian political figures, French phrases concerning immigration and Hebrew references to occupied territories.

In Hindi, the phrase "Rahul is Pappu," a political insult directed at Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, appears among the restricted expressions. The French list includes a phrase meaning "immigration too high," while the Hebrew list contains "occupied territories."

Matt Suiche, an engineer at cybersecurity company Tolmo, independently recovered the same list and found that it closely matched Kauffman's results, he told Reuters.

The researcher cautions that the presence of a phrase in the data does not establish why Apple included it. Some entries may have been generated from broader word patterns rather than selected individually, and not every recovered phrase has been tested on an iPhone.

Apple's own support documentation explains that predictive text offers words and phrases as users type, based on what the keyboard expects them to enter next. Users can reject suggestions, continue typing manually or turn off predictive text through the keyboard settings.

However, those controls do not explain why particular words are excluded from suggestions or provide a way to customize the undisclosed list.

Apple has previously faced questions about unexpected behavior in its language-processing features. In 2025, some users reported that dictating the word "racist" briefly caused the word "Trump" to appear on their screens. Apple said the problem was an error and subsequently fixed it.

Kauffman's research website now allows users to browse the recovered restrictions by language, examine differences between phrases and review changes in Apple's keyboard data over time.