Does resetting the keyboard dictionary remove your custom keyboard on iPhone?
Reset Keyboard Dictionary clears one thing only — the personal, learned-word list iOS built from your typing. It does not touch the Keyboards list, Full Access, or anything a keyboard app stores on its own, and a third-party keyboard that runs its own autocorrect is not affected by it at all.
Autocorrect has been insisting on a word you never meant to keep, or a typo somehow made it into the suggestion bar as if it were normal, and the search for a fix turns up Settings → General → Transfer or Reset iPhone → Reset → Reset Keyboard Dictionary. Right next to it, on the same menu, sits Reset All Settings — the option known for wiping a custom keyboard back to plain Apple grey. It is a reasonable thing to worry the smaller one nearby does the same, quietly, to the keyboard you actually use every day.
What the learned dictionary actually is
Behind the ordinary dictionary iOS ships with, it keeps a second, personal one that builds up from how you actually type. A name, a piece of slang, a brand spelled in a way no dictionary would predict — type it enough times without correcting it, and iOS quietly adds it to that learned list. From then on, autocorrect stops trying to swap it for something else and Check Spelling stops drawing a red line under it. Nothing about this is visible while it happens; there is no progress bar and no setting that shows the list itself, only its effect on words you use often.
What Reset Keyboard Dictionary clears
Exactly that list, and nothing beyond it. The moment you run it, every word your phone had learned goes back to unknown — a name that had stopped being flagged starts getting a red squiggle again, and autocorrect starts treating that same word as a possible typo once more, until it earns its way back into the learned list the same way it did the first time. That is the entire effect. It is a narrow, single-purpose reset, sitting on the same screen as several much broader ones but doing only this one job.
Why it is not the smaller sibling of Reset All Settings
Reset All Settings, the more familiar option on that same menu, clears the Settings app back to its factory state wholesale — Wi-Fi passwords, Bluetooth pairings, the list of keyboards allowed to appear on the globe key, and every per-app permission grant including Full Access, learned dictionary included as one item among many. Reset Keyboard Dictionary is not a smaller version of that same wipe. It is its own separate option, scoped to the learned-word store alone, and running it does not touch any of the other things Reset All Settings clears. The two happen to share a menu; they do not share a blast radius.
What stays exactly where it was
- The keyboard app itself, still on the Home Screen with its own code untouched.
- Its entry in Settings → General → Keyboard → Keyboards — the list that lets the globe key find it in the first place.
- Its Full Access grant, on or off, whichever way you had it set.
- Whatever the app keeps in its own local storage — a chosen theme, a chosen sound, a saved phrase, a purchase already made.
- Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and every other Settings-app preference that Reset All Settings would have cleared.
When this is actually the right tool
It earns its keep in a few specific situations: a typo that got typed enough times to be mistaken for a real word and now keeps sailing past autocorrect; a stretch of heavy typing in a second language that left the dictionary full of words that do not belong in your usual one; or general troubleshooting when autocorrect behaviour seems stuck in a way that turning Auto-Correction off and back on does not fix. In every case, the trade is the same — you lose the learned words, and nothing else, and the ones worth keeping will earn their place back the same way they did originally.
Where a third-party keyboard’s own autocorrect fits in
The learned dictionary this reset touches is a system-level feature, tied to Apple’s own autocorrect and to Check Spelling, not something an individual keyboard extension owns. Plenty of third-party keyboards run their own separate suggestion and autocorrect engine instead of reading that system dictionary at all, which means Reset Keyboard Dictionary simply has nothing to act on where those keyboards are concerned — their own sense of which words you use, if they keep one, lives inside the app’s own storage rather than in the part of the phone this reset reaches.
Where Kibo fits
Kibo runs its own word suggestions and Damerau-Levenshtein autocorrect (teh → the) from a settings panel on the keyboard itself, entirely separate from the system dictionary that Check Spelling and Apple’s own autocorrect rely on — so Reset Keyboard Dictionary changes nothing about how Kibo suggests or corrects a word, before or after. Its themes, its 17 key sounds, its 15 backlight effects and its Full Access grant all live in the app’s own storage as well, which is outside what this reset touches in any case. It is free to download and works with Full Access left off.
Frequently asked questions
Does Reset Keyboard Dictionary delete my custom keyboard app?
No. It clears the personal, learned-word list iOS built from your typing and nothing else — the app, its entry in Settings → Keyboards, and any data it keeps on its own are all untouched.
Will I need to add my keyboard back to the list after resetting the dictionary?
No. That is what Reset All Settings does, by clearing the whole Keyboards list along with Full Access grants. Reset Keyboard Dictionary is a narrower, separate option that only clears learned words.
Does resetting the keyboard dictionary affect a third-party keyboard’s own autocorrect?
Usually not. A keyboard that runs its own suggestion engine, rather than reading iOS’s system dictionary, has nothing for this reset to act on — its autocorrect behaviour stays exactly as it was before.
Try it on your own keyboard
Kibo is a free custom keyboard for iPhone with real mechanical key sounds, a wardrobe of themes and RGB backlight effects. No account, no ads, and it works with Full Access left off.