When you use the on-screen keyboard on an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad Apple’s software will use attempt to automatically correct your spelling mistakes. Sometimes this feature can be a lifesaver, but sometimes you want to type “its” instead of “it’s” and it’s kind of a pain to go back and fix things.

Now it looks like Apple is working on adding a bar above the keyboard which will show auto-correct suggestions as you type. You can tap on any of those words once they appear to save a few keystrokes — or to choose the word you really wanted, but which Apple’s software decided was the wrong choice.

The new feature is already baked into iOS 5 — but it’s not enabled by default. It’s possible that Apple doesn’t think it’s ready for prime time yet. Still, if you want to enable the auto-correct bar, you can do that.

Developer Sonny Dickson has posted instructions. The good news is that you don’t need to jailbreak your iDevice to turn on the auto-correction bar. The less good news is that the process is a little tricky.

You need to backup your device with iTunes, download a third party app called iBackupBot, modify your backup file, and then restore your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad from the modified backup.

In case something goes horribly wrong, it’s probably a good idea to keep a backup of your original backup as well.

The Google Android keyboard, as well as a number of third party keyboards for Android have offered a similar feature for a while, but this is the first time we’ve seen the option in iOS.

via OS X Daily

Brad Linder

Brad Linder is editor of Liliputing and Mobiputing. He's been tinkering with mobile tech for decades and writing about it since...

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