Grammarly Keyboard Not Working on iPhone? Fixes for 2026

TL;DR: if the Grammarly keyboard is not working on your iPhone, update both iOS and the app, remove and re-add the keyboard with Full Access on, and if it still misfires, switch to a keyboard like KeyAI that doesn’t silently stop checking your text. Setup takes about two minutes either way.

Why is the Grammarly keyboard not working on iPhone?

Third-party keyboards on iOS are fragile by design. Apple sandboxes them heavily, and Grammarly’s keyboard extension has to talk to a correction engine that may or may not be reachable at any given moment. When an iOS update ships, or when Grammarly changes how the extension talks to its servers, the keyboard can silently stop working, meaning it stays installed and selectable but stops actually checking anything.

Users have documented this for years, not months. One long-running Grammarly Premium subscriber described contacting tech support and getting no fix at all:

“I pay for Grammarly Premium and I contacted Grammarly tech support this past November… and there is still no fix… On the iPhone Mail app, when I finish an email, I’ll click on the G icon, and it’ll tell me the document is perfect even though it’s full of errors. I have to copy my email text, paste it into the Notes app, have Grammarly spell-check it, and then copy and paste it back into my email.” (via r/Grammarly)

That copy-paste workaround defeats the entire point of a keyboard-level checker. If you’re doing that regularly, the keyboard has effectively stopped working for you, even if the app still opens.

The pattern isn’t limited to one thread either. A widely discussed post on TidBITS Talk, titled “iOS 18 Breaks Grammarly Keyboard”, tracked the same kind of breakage after a system update, with users comparing notes on which iOS version introduced the regression and which one, if any, fixed it.

How do you fix the Grammarly keyboard on iOS?

Start with the basics before assuming it’s unfixable. Update iOS to the latest version, then update the Grammarly app itself in the App Store, since old builds often carry the exact bug that got fixed in a newer release. Restart the phone after both updates, not just the app, because iOS caches keyboard extensions in memory.

If that doesn’t help, remove and re-add the keyboard:

1. Open Settings, General, Keyboard, Keyboards.
2. Swipe left on Grammarly and tap Delete.
3. Restart your iPhone.
4. Re-add Grammarly through Add New Keyboard, and turn Allow Full Access back on.

This clears whatever corrupted state was causing the false “no errors” readings for a lot of users. It’s also worth double-checking Full Access specifically, since iOS sometimes resets keyboard permissions after a major update without any notification, and a keyboard running without Full Access can’t reach its correction engine at all, so it’ll look installed but do nothing. If the keyboard still misbehaves after a clean reinstall, the issue is almost certainly server-side or in Grammarly’s extension code, not something a setting on your phone can fix, and that’s worth knowing before you spend another hour troubleshooting.

Why does Grammarly say text is perfect when it isn’t?

This exact complaint shows up repeatedly across Grammarly’s own subreddit. The pattern: you type a message full of obvious errors, tap the Grammarly icon, and it reports the text is clean. What’s actually happening is the keyboard has lost its connection to Grammarly’s correction engine in the background, silently, so it stops checking anything but still shows a normal-looking icon instead of an error state.

One user described it bluntly after using the product for years without issues:

“Someone did something in the last year (likely involving ai) that has made grammarly LITERALLY make typos… grammarly literally makes incoherent suggestions at this point. IT WORKED PERFECTLY FOR YEARS.” (via r/Grammarly)

There’s no user-side setting for this. It’s a strange kind of bug because it fails silently: a broken app that crashes is obvious, but a grammar checker that just stops noticing errors looks, from the outside, exactly like a grammar checker doing a great job. A checker that quietly stops checking is worse than no checker at all, because you trust the “all clear” signal and send the message anyway.

How do you stop Grammarly hijacking your keyboard?

A separate but related complaint: after installing Grammarly, it becomes the default keyboard in every app, replacing the standard iOS keyboard everywhere, not just where you want it. People have asked about this directly, describing wanting the standard keyboard to stay default and only switching to Grammarly when needed. It isn’t only on Reddit either. On X, one user described a floating Grammarly icon overlapping the text they were trying to type in a completely different app, asking how to make it stop showing up uninvited.

To fix it, go to Settings, General, Keyboard, Keyboards, and check the order of the list. iOS treats the top keyboard in the list as default in some contexts, so drag your preferred keyboard above Grammarly, or remove Grammarly from the list entirely and only re-add it for sessions where you specifically want grammar checking. There’s no in-app toggle for this inside Grammarly itself, it has to be managed from iOS Settings directly.

What’s a reliable alternative that just works?

If you’ve updated, reinstalled, and reordered the keyboard list and it’s still unreliable, switching products is a reasonable next step rather than a last resort.

KeyAI runs the same way any third-party keyboard does, so setup takes the same four steps: install, add in Settings, allow Full Access, switch with the globe key. Spelling and grammar correction is one of 10+ tools, alongside tone rewriting, paraphrasing, translation, and an ask-AI feature, all inside the same keyboard, across 60+ languages. For someone texting in English with a Spanish-speaking family group chat, that language coverage alone is often reason enough to switch, since Grammarly won’t touch the Spanish half of the conversation at all. For a fuller side-by-side, see Grammarly AI alternatives for iPhone or the deeper breakdown at Grammarly on iPhone.

A grammar checker that randomly stops working, or takes over your default keyboard without asking, isn’t saving you time anymore, it’s costing you time. If the fixes above don’t stick after a few days, that’s a signal worth acting on rather than tolerating for another seven months. KeyAI has a 3-day free trial with no card required.

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