A hidden catalog of 4,513 English words and phrases that Apple’s iPhone keyboard will never suggest has been decoded by a researcher — part of a system that Reuters counted at more than 100,000 blocked entries across 27 other languages and writing systems. The English list alone has grown from roughly 1,700 entries in iOS 14 in 2020, according to Derik Kauffman.
Researcher Derik Kauffman published the decoded lists on a website called Swipeblocked, alongside his code and data on GitHub. Reuters first reported the findings on Nov. 6, writing that Kauffman used Codex from OpenAI and Claude Code from Anthropic to locate the list deep inside iOS. His lists reflect iOS 27.0 and the language data Apple distributed in October 2026.
How the Blocklist Steers What You Type
The filtering is not a ban. Tap the letters one by one and the keyboard lets everything through, so users can still write any blocked phrase. Instead, Apple suppresses the phrases from predictive text and swipe suggestions, quietly shaping which sentences are easy to produce when typing quickly.
The rules apply to exact word sequences, so a slightly different phrasing slips through. Swipe typing behaves even more strangely: after swiping “left wing,” the keyboard will go back and change “wing” to “wrong” if you then swipe “conspiracy,” so “left wing conspiracy” never appears on screen. English has a separate, shorter list for swipe writing of about 2,800 entries, which is why some entries such as “Santa isn’t real” can still be swiped even though they are never suggested.
Single words Apple marks as offensive are never suggested, while words it marks as vulgar appear only after the user has typed them three times.
What Sits on the English List
The catalog spans profanity, sexual slang, political slogans, historical events and jokes such as “Santa isn’t real” and “iMessage isn’t working.” American political jabs like “sleepy Joe” and “dictator Trump” sit alongside “NSA surveillance,” “Covid was a hoax,” “send nudes” and “tree hugger.” The only full personal name on the English list is Trayvon Martin.
Some entries look like one-sided judgments. “Bad girl” is blocked; “bad boy” is not. “I’m white” is blocked; “I’m black” is not. “Taiwan is country” is blocked, while “Taiwan is a country” passes.
Each Language Gets Its Own List
Other languages carry their own local flashpoints. The Chinese lists include “June Fourth,” the shorthand for the Tiananmen Square crackdown, and the name of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo. In Chinese, blocked words still appear when typed in pinyin, but once one is selected the keyboard stops suggesting what comes next. One part of Apple’s Chinese input engine also skips suggestions after “taiwan” or “tibet” written in English. Turkish blocks “Armenian genocide,” Italian blocks “Crimea is Russian,” and German blocks dozens of Nazi slogans. The Hebrew list contains only six entries.
How Kauffman Decoded the Lists
Apple stores the lists as 32-bit fingerprints rather than words, so Kauffman recovered them by generating possible phrases and checking each against Apple’s table. Anything no one thinks to test stays hidden, and he said the lists are incomplete where entries could not be decoded. Being on the list also reveals nothing about why Apple added an entry.
Apple told Reuters that the keyboard is designed to avoid potentially inappropriate or offensive suggestions and that users can still type what they want or override a suggestion. That explains the profanity. It does not explain why “iMessage isn’t working” is on the list.
The List Keeps Growing
The filtering applies to every iPhone in every market, with one list per keyboard language. Apple updates it with each iOS release and in between through language data the iPhone downloads in the background. Comparing versions, Kauffman found the English list held around 1,700 entries in iOS 14 in 2020 and had grown to 4,513 in iOS 27.0. Entries also disappear: two presidential titles that had been blocked since a 2022 update were removed in iOS 26.3. Because the background downloads can change the list without a software update, Swipeblocked now tracks each new version as it ships. Apple has not said whether it will publish the lists itself.
Questions Readers Ask About Apple’s Hidden Keyboard List
Can I still type a blocked phrase on an iPhone? Yes. Typing the letters one by one lets every entry through, so the list restricts suggestions and swipe input, not the keyboard itself.
Why is any particular phrase on the list? That remains unknown. Apple stores entries as 32-bit fingerprints and has not published the lists or explained how a phrase gets added, so the reasoning behind entries like “iMessage isn’t working” is not visible.
Does the blocklist change over time? Yes. Apple updates it with every iOS release and through background language-data downloads, and entries have both appeared and been removed — the English list grew from about 1,700 entries in 2020 to 4,513 in iOS 27.0.
Apple has not said whether it will ever publish the lists, so until it does, the iPhone keyboard keeps making small decisions about your sentences — decisions you can only spot by noticing what it never suggests.
Worth a look