Are you tired of your Android phone auto-correcting abbreviations, complex names, or made-up words that you often use? Not anymore. Next time, add your custom words and phrases to your device’s dictionary so that they are considered proper and don’t get changed.
Adding words to your Android’s Dictionary:
- Open the “Settings” menu on your phone, and head over to “Languages & input.”
- Scroll down and you will found an entry named “Personal dictionary.”
- If you don’t find there, then navigate to Google Keyboard Settings > Text Correction > dictionary > Personal dictionary.
- Tap the “Personal dictionary” entry, then choose the language you’d like to work with if you have more than one enabled.
- If you haven’t added any words to the “Personal dictionary” yet, the following message displays.
- To add custom words to your Android’s Personal dictionary, tap the “+” icon in the upper-right corner.
- Here, you can type out any word or phrase you want to add to the dictionary.
Anything added here is considered a proper word. So, that word will no longer get auto-corrected when you type. Also, your phone will begin auto-correcting mistypes to these words just like any other.
If you want to delete any word from the “Personal dictionary”, tap on the word in the list and tap “Delete” in the upper-right corner of the screen. But remember that even if you delete a word from the “Personal dictionary”, Google has still learned the word and will suggest it in the autocorrect bar when you start typing it.
Add Shortcuts for Quicker Typing:
The personal dictionary has another handy use: You can also add shortcuts to words so that each time you want to type the longer word, you can use those shorter words to type them as fast.
For example, type a word (e.g. “AllTechBuzz”) and then type a shorter phrase (e.g. “atb”) in the Shortcut box.
Whenever you type the shortcut, your keyboard will suggest the full word so you can enter it with one tap. This is great for any lengthy phrases you type often. You could make @@ a shortcut for your email address, for example.
NOTE: All this only holds if you use the default Android keyboard. Google’s Gboard or any other keyboard that uses the device’s in-built dictionary for auto-correct suggestions can also take advantage of this. If you use a third-party keyboard, like Swype or SwiftKey, this might work differently. In those apps, you may have to long-press on a typed or suggested word to add or remove it from your dictionary.
Now, have a more efficient texting and typing experience!
