Safari gives strange predictions

Safari gives really strange predictions/ suggestions whenever I search the meaning of a word and it’s been bugging me for a while and I’m looking for an explanation or solution to my problem. I live in Mexico so I can’t get my head around as to why I should be getting these strange suggestions of languages spoken in India?. I have contacted apple support for aid but they have failed to give a proper solution. The last time I contacted apple support they believed it was due to something that could be fixed in settings but nothing seems to be amiss so that’s useless. One important thing to note is that my dad ( that lives in the same house I do) shares the same problem, we both have the exact same issue even though we use different cellphones . Thank you for reading this!, any help is welcome.

iPhone SE, iOS 17

Posted on Nov 30, 2023 4:45 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Dec 2, 2023 6:49 PM

Search autocompletion suggestions in Safari come from your choice of search provider, not from Safari itself or your search/browsing history). If I go to Google and type in "tame meaning in" then the autocomplete results look just like the ones from your screenshot. Clearly this is either a bad prediction from Google, or a good prediction from Google, but one that is not helpful to you. In fact, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Yahoo search all have the same set of suggestions for that query. I suppose translation of words into those languages must be quite popular right now, as autocomplete suggestions are usually based on the top search queries beginning with that phrase.


You can complain to search engine providers if really don't like these autocomplete predictions, or you can turn off search autocomplete suggestions in Settings > Safari > under SEARCH toggle Search Engine Suggestions off. This will also reflect in spotlight search after restarting your iPhone.


Another possibility is to look up "meaning" (not entirely sure if you mean dictionary meaning or translation) using a dedicated app, like a dictionary such as Miriam-Webster. That way there will be no ambiguity as to what you are looking for and therefore you won't receive unhelpful autocomplete suggestions for translations into languages you don't want.

2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Dec 2, 2023 6:49 PM in response to TheHollywoodPhantom

Search autocompletion suggestions in Safari come from your choice of search provider, not from Safari itself or your search/browsing history). If I go to Google and type in "tame meaning in" then the autocomplete results look just like the ones from your screenshot. Clearly this is either a bad prediction from Google, or a good prediction from Google, but one that is not helpful to you. In fact, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Yahoo search all have the same set of suggestions for that query. I suppose translation of words into those languages must be quite popular right now, as autocomplete suggestions are usually based on the top search queries beginning with that phrase.


You can complain to search engine providers if really don't like these autocomplete predictions, or you can turn off search autocomplete suggestions in Settings > Safari > under SEARCH toggle Search Engine Suggestions off. This will also reflect in spotlight search after restarting your iPhone.


Another possibility is to look up "meaning" (not entirely sure if you mean dictionary meaning or translation) using a dedicated app, like a dictionary such as Miriam-Webster. That way there will be no ambiguity as to what you are looking for and therefore you won't receive unhelpful autocomplete suggestions for translations into languages you don't want.

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Safari gives strange predictions

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