Do word suggestions actually save typing time?

Not reliably. A word suggestion cuts the number of key presses you make, but you also have to read the choice and accept it. In a controlled study, that attention slowed average entry even though suggestions cut the keystrokes. For a fast typist on a phone or keyboard, the honest answer is that suggestions often do not make the finished text arrive sooner.

Word suggestions are different from autocorrect. Autocorrect changes a word for you without asking you to choose, while a suggestion waits for your decision. That difference is why the two features get different results, as our question on whether autocorrect makes you type faster explains.

Suggestions cut keystrokes, so the count falls

Fewer keystrokes is the first thing a suggestion gives you. Researchers measure this as keystrokes per character. A basic keyboard needs one press for each character. For English, word prediction scores about 0.5, because one press can complete a whole word ¹.

A lower count of presses is not the same as a faster finish. Time depends on how long it takes to find the suggestion, decide it is right, and tap it. Measured as time, the gain can shrink or disappear.

Controlled studies show the cost of attention

In a 2016 study of mobile keyboard suggestions, the authors varied how assertively suggestions were shown. They found that the cost of attending to and using suggestions hurt average entry time ². The same study found that more assertive suggestions reduced the number of keyboard actions, and participants preferred them ³.

So the study shows two things that pull in opposite directions. Suggestions reduce the actions you take, and people like them, but the average typist did not finish faster. Fewer actions and a faster finish are different outcomes.

A large phone study found no speed gain from prediction

In a study of 37,370 volunteers typing on their own phones ⁴, people who reported using word prediction alone averaged 32.8 words per minute, against 34.8 for people who used no intelligent text entry feature ⁵. That comparison is correlational. People who choose prediction may differ in other ways, so the gap is a warning sign rather than a verdict.

The gain is largest for slower typists and for communication aids

Suggestions help more when the typist is slower. A 2020 study of suggestions found that they boosted text entry speed, but with diminishing benefit for faster typists ⁶. A slow typist has more to gain from a predicted word than a fast one does.

Larger gains appear in communication aids. In a simulation of augmentative communication, an advanced word prediction system improved communication rate by 58.6 percent over letter-by-letter entry ⁷. That is a simulation for people who cannot type easily, not a result for typists on a phone.

Blind smartphone users show no clear gain. In a 2024 study, average speed was 1.63 words per minute with word prediction and 1.87 without it ⁸. The paired test found no significant difference between the two keyboards ⁹. The sample was small, so the study shows that prediction did not clearly help this group, not that it hurt them. Our guide to accessibility and dictation covers this group in more depth.

It depends on your typing speed, the phone, and the word

Suggestions are most useful for long or unusual words, where the keyboard saves several presses and you are unlikely to type the word quickly on your own. They are least useful for short, common words, where reading a suggestion may take as long as typing the word. Your own speed sets the balance: the slower you type, the more a correct suggestion is worth.

Accuracy matters too. A faster finish with more errors to fix is not a gain. Our explainer on typing accuracy shows how to count errors in the final text, not just the keys pressed.

What to do

1. Test your own speed with the same passage, once with suggestions on and once with them off. Use the method in our guide to how typing speed is measured.
2. Repeat the test over a few days, and count errors in the final text as well as the speed.
3. If the test shows you are faster with suggestions off, turn them off.
4. If you type slowly, or a word is long or hard to spell, keep suggestions on for that case.
5. For phrases you type often, a text expander is a better tool than a suggestion. The question on what a text expander is explains the difference.

The overall picture is in our guide to text expanders and autocomplete, and the wider context for speed is in the overview of typing speed.