Apple changed its iPhone keyboard’s political phrase filter in different directions across two software releases, according to a researcher’s reconstruction of Apple language files. The iOS 27.0 English list added “Zionist propaganda” as its only new phrase, while iOS 26.3 removed “President Trump” and “President Bush,” which had appeared on the restricted list since 2022.
The comparison, published by independent researcher Derik Kauffman, identifies changes that Apple has not individually explained. Apple released iOS 27.0 on September 14, but the filtering system came under wider public scrutiny on November 6 following a Reuters investigation.
Kauffman’s historical data indicates that the English list expanded from approximately 1,700 phrases in iOS 14.0 in 2020 to 4,513 readable phrases in iOS 27.0. The underlying iOS 27.0 predictive-text table contains 4,525 entries, reflecting a difference between recovered phrases and table slots.
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Other political expressions entered the system at different times. “Dictator Trump” was added in iOS 16.1 alongside combinations referencing other dictators. “Sleepy Joe” followed in iOS 16.2, while “make America great again” appeared in a June 2022 language-data update.
The rules operate at the suggestion layer, not at the point of manual text entry. Users can type the expressions letter by letter. Predictive text generally avoids proposing flagged sequences, and swipe-typing may substitute other words or alter a preceding word.
The research counts 2,794 entries in the iOS 27.0 English swipe-specific table, compared with 4,525 in the broader predictions table.
Kauffman extracted the system by analyzing compact hash-based language files rather than finding a readable list of words. His published code supports reproducing much of the analysis. The researcher cautions that a phrase’s presence establishes a technical restriction, not Apple’s reason for including it.
Reuters tested a sample of flagged phrases on an iPhone and reported that the results broadly matched the research.
Apple told Reuters that its keyboard is designed to avoid inappropriate or offensive suggestions, and that users can still type or override predictions. It did not explain the selection of individual political phrases or confirm the overall list size.
The technical comparison also has a dating limit. Some restrictions arrive through background language downloads, and Kauffman could not retrieve every historical version.
Other expressions identified in the filtering system include “right wing conspiracy,” “Tibetan independence,” “United Ireland,” “white man,” “read gay smut,” and “Santa isn’t real.” The restrictions extend beyond English, with “occupied territories” flagged in Hebrew, “immigration too high” in French, and political insults targeting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and opposition leader Rahul Gandhi in Hindi.
