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‘About ducking time!’: Apple updates autocorrect to allow a certain swear word

Expressing yourself on iPhone is about to get a heck of a lot more colorful.
Apple says iPhone won't correct swear word to 'ducking' in new update
Time to bid farewell to your ducking autocorrect woes on iPhone.TODAY Illustration
/ Source: TODAY

Call it a ducking win for the masses.

Apple has updated autocorrect to address a common text edit that has held iPhone users back from using their favorite four-letter word for far too long. 

During the keynote address at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference on June 5, the tech behemoth unveiled its latest software, services and operating systems, including the latest Apple Vision Pro and MacBook Air.

Above all of its tech debuts, users online were the most thrilled by the announcement that Apple updated its software to be more inclusive of a particular profane word typically adjusted to “duck” or “ducking” on its devices.

Apple’s Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, explained that Apple’s latest software, iOS 17, updates keyboard intelligence to make sentence level corrections and give users a quick option to revert back to their original text.

“And in those moments where you just want to type a ducking word... Well, the keyboard will learn it, too,” Federighi cheekily said.

The update also improves the accuracy of word prediction, which will change based on each individual's usage, Federighi said.

“When it comes to speeding up your typing, predictive text already helps you quickly finish add or change a word, and now you’ll get predictions in line as you type,” Federighi said. “So finishing a word or even the whole sentence is as easy as tapping the spacebar.”

In response to the news, social media users were quick to celebrate the change.

“It’s about ducking time! Duck! Still need to update my OS,” another replied with the hashtag, #DuckingAutocorrect.

“Apple is fixing one of its most annoying auto-correct features. It’s a big ducking deal,” one enthusiastic Twitter user shared of the news in part.

“Thank duck for that,” another quipped.

Though the iPhone's autocorrection of curse words has plagued users for years, there are pre-existing workarounds to fix it manually.

As CNBC reported in 2018, users have been able to turn off autocorrect altogether. They have also been able to turn the word "ducking" into a shortcut to trigger the naughty word using the "text replacement" setting.