Swipeblocked

What the keyboard does

• Predictive text never offers a phrase on the list, even when it's the obvious next word.
• Swipe typing won't produce most of them either. The keyboard picks another word, sometimes an implausible one, and can change a word you already entered.
• Typing letter by letter always works. Nothing on the list stops you writing it.
• The rules match exact word sequences. A blocked phrase can go through with a slightly different wording.

Some phrases are blocked only in suggestions and can still be swiped. They're marked Swipe works below. Separately, single words Apple labels offensive are never suggested, and vulgar ones only after you've typed them three times; see Word labels.

Examples

A selection from the English list. Each phrase stands for its other word forms too, so “sleepy Joe” also covers “sleepier Joe”.

Conspiracies

• NSA surveillanceAlso: NSA spies on
• left wing conspiracyAlso: right wing conspiracy, left and right wing propaganda
• Covid was a hoaxAlso: a scam, a lie, a myth, a jokeSwipe works
• Santa isn't real

Terrorist attacks

• Belfast confetti
• marathon bombing
• Mumbai attack
• school shooting
• subway attack

Politics

• sleepy Joe
• Tibetan independence
• Trayvon MartinThe only person's full name on the list
• Kashmir dispute
• United Ireland
• Taiwan is countryOnly this wording. “Taiwan is a country” isn't blocked.
• Tamil homelandAlso: guerrilla, heartland, militant, minorities, rebel, separatist
• Muslim extremistAlso Shiite and Sunni, with extremism, fighter, fundamentalism, fundamentalist, insurgence, insurgent, militant, militia, militiaman, rebel, separatism, separatist and slum
• dictator TrumpAlso: dictator Benito, Ferdinand, Francisco, Josef, Joseph, Kim, Manuel, Mobutu, Mohamed, Rafael, SuhartoSwipe works
• illegal immigrantAlso: alien, immigration, immunization, migrant, people, vote, voterSwipe works
• make America great againSwipe works

Contested beliefs

• homosexuality is a sin
• support gays
• Nazis were good

Slurs and stereotypes

• Indian giver
• slit eye
• towel head

Insults

• Bible thumper
• male chauvinist pig
• son of a bitch
• trailer trash
• tree hugger

Sex

• booty call
• Cleveland steamer
• cunning linguist
• flick the bean
• send nudes
• sixty nine
• watching porn

Drugs

• crystal meth
• smoking weed

And

• iMessage isn't working

• See all 4,513 English phrasesFull list

One side of the pair

Sometimes a phrase is blocked while its obvious counterpart isn't.

Other languages

Apple keeps similar lists for 27 other languages and scripts, many as long as the English one. A few entries are below; translations are approximate. Apple's data often drops capitals and accents (“deutschland uber alles”); they're restored here for reading.

Chinese

• 六四June Fourth, the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown
• 台独Taiwan independence
• 习大大“Big Daddy Xi”, a nickname for Xi Jinping
• 刘晓波Liu Xiaobo, the jailed Nobel Peace Prize laureate
• 钓鱼岛是日本“The Diaoyu Islands are Japan's”, Japan's side of the dispute over the islands it calls the Senkakus
• 国民党The KMT, Taiwan's Nationalist party. In Simplified Chinese the name of China's Communist Party isn't blocked; in Traditional Chinese both are.

Chinese works differently. These words still appear as candidates when you type them in pinyin, but once you pick one the keyboard stops suggesting what comes next. In one part of the Chinese typing engine, Apple's code also skips suggestions whenever a word is “taiwan” or “tibet”, written in English.

Hindi

• मंदिर वहीं बनेगा“The temple will be built right there”, the Ayodhya Ram temple slogan
• अच्छे दिन आने“Good days are coming”, a 2014 BJP campaign slogan
• पप्पू है राहुल“Rahul is Pappu”, a jibe at Rahul Gandhi
• लव जिहाद“Love jihad”

Arabic

• حركة حماسThe Hamas movement
• العدوان الإسرائيلي“Israeli aggression”
• أحتلال أمريكي“American occupation”. Israeli, Iranian and Saudi occupation are blocked too.

Hebrew

• השטחים הכבושים“The occupied territories”. The whole Hebrew list has six entries.

Spanish

• inmigrante ilegal“Illegal immigrant”
• Gibraltar español“Spanish Gibraltar”, Spain's side of the dispute with Britain

German

• Heil HitlerAlong with dozens of Nazi slogans and banned neo-Nazi groups
• Deutschland über alles“Germany above all”, from the first verse of the old national anthem, no longer sung since the Nazi era
• NSA spioniere“NSA spies”. NSA torture and CIA spying are blocked too.

French

• bombardement d'israélien“Israeli bombing”. American bombing, and bombing in Syria and in France, are blocked too.
• immigration trop élevée“Immigration too high”

Italian

• Crimea è russa“Crimea is Russian”

Dutch

• ctrl-alt-delete jezelf“Ctrl-alt-delete yourself”, a way of saying “kill yourself”

Swedish and Danish

• bevara Sverige svenskt“Keep Sweden Swedish”, a nationalist slogan
• dum svenskeDanish for “stupid Swede”

Turkish

• Ermeni soykırım“Armenian genocide”
• baş örtülü“Headscarf-wearing”, about women. The opposite, baş örtmeyen, is blocked too.

Punjabi

• ਖਾਲਿਸਤਾਨ ਜਿੰਦਾਬਾਦ“Long live Khalistan”

• Browse every languageFull list

More

• Changes since 2020What Apple added and removed in each update
• Word labelsSingle words Apple tags as vulgar, offensive or sensitive
• How the list was decodedApple stores fingerprints, not words. Here's how they were matched.