Gboard automatically capitalizes first letters of words mid-sentence? Here's possibly why and how to fix it

Gboard, Google’s popular keyboard app, can sometimes automatically capitalize the first letter of words in unexpected or seemingly random ways. This frustrating behavior has puzzled many users, but after researching comments and potential explanations, a couple of likely reasons and fixes emerge.

This isn’t a bug that spawned recently. I found a thread from five years ago on the Google Pixel subreddit with over 450+ upvotes and 235 comments discussing the problem. The worst part is that there’s still no proper fix which is indicated by the fact that I’m seeing similar posts appear now and then. After reading countless comments, I noticed that most users experience the bug when using voice-to-text or when using Glide typing (swipe to type). Here’s an image shared by a user for reference:

One possible reason is that Gboard “learns” new words from your typing habits, especially when you deliberately capitalize a word that is not normally capitalized. For example, if you type “Project Manager” with a capitalized “Project” several times, Gboard may start suggesting capitalizing “Project” in regular sentences too.

As one user explained: “When it learns a ‘new’ word from my typing in situations where I deliberately capitalize a word that is normally not capitalized…Gboard will begin suggesting the word capitalized in a typical conversation.”

Another potential cause is that Gboard may remember a new word you taught it as capitalized if it happened to be the first word of a sentence when you originally typed it.

Of course, unless Google provides an explanation, these reasons are nothing more than speculation. Speaking of which, there are a couple other reasons that I presume might be causing the problem. For instance, if you have multiple language keyboards enabled in Gboard, the app may get confused about capitalization rules across different languages. It’s also possible that a bug or error in Gboard’s autocorrect algorithm could be causing random capitalization issues for some users.

Fortunately, there are a few methods to fix Gboard’s over-capitalization:

• Hit backspace when it autocorrects to remove the capitalization, then long-press on the incorrect capitalized suggestion in the word ribbon. This will allow you to remove that capitalized word from Gboard’s suggestions.
• Go into Gboard’s settings and personal dictionary to remove any capitalized words you don’t want capitalized.
• Reset Gboard’s learned data, though this will clear out all learned words, including slang, names, etc. that you may want to keep.

As one user noted, “The only way I’ve found to stop it is to tap the lowercase suggestion until it re-learns, or wipe the keyboard’s cache and let it start over.”

NOTE: Gboard also has an option to disable ‘Auto-capitalization’ too. So if this really bothers you, it can be turned off by going to Gboard settings > Text correction > Toggle off Auto-capitalization. Just remember that doing so will mean that you will manually have to capitalize words, which could be even more frustrating.

So while Gboard’s auto-capitalization can be annoying, it often stems from the app’s ability to learn your writing patterns. With a few quick taps, you can retrain it or remove problematic capitalized words without losing all your other custom dictionary entries.

Hopefully, Google figures out a way to solve the problem. Frustrated users are already considering switching to SwiftKey or other keyboards, if not switched already, due to the haphazard auto-capitalization bug with Gboard. Fortunately, as someone who has been using Gboard for several years, I haven’t been troubled by the problem on any of my devices. I must admit, however, that I rarely use voice typing, which is possibly why I haven’t experienced the bug. That said, I do use Gboard’s Glide typing and haven’t had any trouble with it.