Apple’s iOS slide-to-type keyboard entry suddenly worse?

TidBITS Talk
1

A few weeks ago, I felt like I must be fat fingering my slide-to-type keyboard in iOS. I use the default one. (I’m aware of others, like Gboard, but that is not the question/issue here.)

It seemed like the anticipated words from sliding were becoming far worse, far more often than the last couple of years. Then, out of the blue, my wife asked me a few days ago if I were seeing this? Yes! She asked around, and a few of her friends thought the same.

Obviously subjective, but it definitely seemed like a real thing to me, confirmed without discussion with her. Does anyone notice better/worse performance in just the last few weeks?

2

I can’t pinpoint when I started observing this, but I also feel that the “predictions” have become a lot worse to the point of being annoying. In particular, when using “QuickType” (haha, yeah, nice name, that!), the suggested words are not just not what I’m trying to “write;” they’re also generally much less common than the ones I’m looking for. :man_shrugging:

Also, it usually takes several attempts at re-typing those words to re-train the prediction algorithm. And then it will still suggest the “wrong” options. sigh