Writer dumps Apple's word list
Archived — this story has rotated out of today’s deck. It is kept here in full.
The gist
Developer Helge Sverre published dumps of Apple's private word lists for 15 languages, flagging words as vulgar, offensive or sensitive.
The lists sit in hidden system files, and his own profanity-tracking database stayed empty.
Background
Helge Sverre is an all-stack developer based in Bergen, Norway, who wrote the article "I Dumped Apple's Fucking Word List." Apple's autocorrect and related text features rely on private per-language dictionaries under /System/Library/LinguisticData/, which carry flags marking words as vulgar, offensive or sensitive, plus up to eleven topic flags. The story follows Apple executive Craig Federighi's June 2023 WWDC announcement that the iOS 17 keyboard rewrite would learn when a user wants to type a "ducking word." Sverre traced that behavior upstream to the dictionaries, which are read through private functions in Apple's Lexicon.framework.
How it unfolded
- Jun 2023At WWDC, Apple executive Craig Federighi announced the iOS 17 autocorrect rewrite, saying the keyboard would learn when a user wants to type a "ducking word."
- Apr 2024The author's ~/Library/Keyboard/VulgarWordUsage.db file was last written; it contains zero rows and its properties table holds only version = 2.
- Nov 3, 2026Helge Sverre published "I Dumped Apple's Fucking Word List," describing the dictionaries' vulgar, offensive and sensitive tier flags and posting full dumps for 15 languages in a gist.
Who’s saying what
- Author
- Sverre says the VulgarWordUsage.db database is real and records which swear words a user types per app and per recipient so autocorrect learns to stop "ducking" them.
- Caution
- Sverre found his own database empty and typing swear words into a native app did not fill it; he said he doesn't know why and couldn't work it out.
Still unverified
Sverre could not determine why his database stayed empty, saying "Maybe the Mac never records anything here, or maybe it only does so in some apps or settings."