7 of the Best New Keyboard Features in iOS 17

Your iPhone’s keyboard just got a lot better, thanks to a handful of updates that just shipped with iOS 17. Apple claims it improved many aspects of the keyboard that tend to be frustrating to use, such as autocorrect (thank goodness), including the ability to swear without issue. (About ducking time, Apple.) Here’s everything that’s changed in your iPhone’s keyboard with iOS 17.

It’s easier than ever to swear

Although there are ways to stop autocorrect from censoring you, none are better than iOS 17’s built-in explicit language handler. Apple says your iPhone can now add swear words to your personal vocabulary and remember the kinds of words you use in different apps. If you tend to use a wide variety of colourful words across different apps, then your iPhone keyboard will remember and suggest those words accordingly. That way, your keyboard doesn’t suggest the same types of messages for your best friend that it does for your boss.

Better autocorrect suggestions

Apple claims to have improved one of the greatest annoyances that every iPhone user faces: autocorrect. Autocorrect in iOS 17 should give better word suggestions and be able to correct entire sentences. It also underlines words it changes, which makes it easy to see where you might have made a mistake (or where you’d prefer to revert to what you had originally written).

Improved autocorrect accuracy

Autocorrect in iOS 17 is also much more accurate than before, according to Apple. Use the keyboard as you normally would, and autocorrect suggestions should be improved across the board. In years past, autocorrect accuracy has sometimes declined over time. One can only hope that the accuracy remains high after a few months of using iOS 17.

In-line predictive text

Building off these intelligent features, iOS 17 now offers in-line predictive text, like you’d find in Google Docs. If iOS thinks it can complete your sentence for you, you’ll see those words appear faintly. Tap them to add them, or ignore them to type whatever you want.

More transliteration keyboards

Particularly for Indian languages such as Hindi, iOS has built-in transliteration keyboards that allow you to use Latin characters as well. iOS then suggests the corresponding words in the native language, so you can pick the right words quickly. This allows speakers of these languages to type much faster in their native languages. iOS 17 adds transliteration keyboards for Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu.

Better keyboards for many languages

QuickPath, the keyboard feature that allows you to swipe to type, now works with more languages—Arabic, Hebrew, Korean, Polish, and Romanian. Predictive text support has been added for Hebrew, Polish, and Romanian too. Finally, multilingual keyboards are now available in Polish, Romanian, and Turkish.

A handwriting keyboard for Japanese

The Japanese keyboard now lets you draw characters and convert them to text. This is pretty useful, as the Japanese script has thousands of characters, and sometimes it’s faster to draw the one you’re looking for.