13 iPhone Keyboard Tips

While most iPhone users use the virtual on-screen keyboard to type all day long, many don't know about some important techniques that can make typing easier. Learn how to type punctuation easier, slide-to-type, use the one-handed keyboard, add more keyboards, search for emoji and access hidden characters.

Video Transcript: Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let's take a look at some iPhone typing tricks.
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So a lot of us use our iPhones all day long and we're usually typing on that little virtual keyboard. There are some handy tricks that you should know to make typing easier. The key to getting to a lot of special functions for the iPhone keyboard is using the icon at the bottom left corner of the screen. It looks like a little smiley face. If you tap and hold that for a fraction of a second you get a menu. At the top of the menu you have Quick Access to Keyboard Settings. Now you can also go into the Settings app, in General, and then go to Keyboard there. But this is quicker.
Underneath that we've got a list of all the keyboards you have. Now by default you're going to have the keyboard for the main language for your iPhone. So in this case English US and also the Emoji keyboard. But you can have more here. The way to get more is to go into Keyboard Settings and then you can see at the top it says Keyboards. I have two. I tap on that you can see English and Emoji. You can add a new keyboard and you can see a whole list of different ones. Most of these are for different languages. But also notice that there is one there under third party keyboards. So when you install an app an app can include a special keyboard. In this case the Goggle app includes the Gboard keyboard which is a Goggle keyboard. But there are a lot of other apps, if you search in the App Store, that include keyboards as well. Just search for Keyboards or Special Keyboards. Lots of different things come up.
At the bottom of this menu you'll notice there are icons and the middle one is selected. The one on the left and the one on the right are one-handed keyboards. Now you only see these on the iPhone if you're in vertical mode. But if you choose one you can see it puts the whole keyboard over to that side and you can easily switch to the other side as well. You also have that little arrow there. You can tap that to go back to the full size keyboard. It makes it a little easier to type especially on the larger screen iPhones with just your thumb as your holding your phone with one hand.
Now a lot of the things I'm going to show you are in settings in Keyboard Settings. You can see I've got them all turned on. But if something isn't working for you you may want to look to see if you've turned that off. You can see one option there is Smart Punctuation. So the deal with Smart Punctuation is it does two things. One is it will make quotes Curly Quotes to surround the text that you're typing. So if I were to type a quote there you can see it starts it curling in the one direction and then if I type the quote again it curls around in the other direction. So it automatically does that. There isn't a separate key for those two types of quotes. It does that depending upon if there is a character on the left or a character on the right.
Another thing that Smart Punctuation does is if you type the dash twice it won't actually put two dashes there. It will convert that to a long dash.
Now in Settings there's also a setting at the bottom for Period Shortcut. If you have that on what happens is when you finish typing a sentence if you press the spacebar twice instead of two spaces you get a period and a space. So you can see there how it automatically added a period. I didn't have to actually go to punctuation at the end of the sentence. Now if you want to use some another punctuation, like a comma, you have to tap the little 123 key there. Then you see the punctuation and you can say use that. Then tap the ABC key to go back. But you don't actually have to do that. You can do it with a quick slide movement. So I can just tap and hold 123 key, slide over to the comma, release, and you can see it automatically goes back to the regular keyboard. So tap, slide, and release can take the place of switching keyboards, hitting the punctuation, and switching keyboards back.
Now there are more characters that you can type than what you can see on the various keyboards. Of course you have the main keyboard here, you can go to the Number keyboard there, and then you have the special character keyboard by pressing that key there. There's even more than that because you can tap and hold some characters and get a list of alternatives. For instance if I tap and some letters like the a key it will bring up a list of alternatives. A lot of accent marks and things like that. I could easily select one. It works for some keys but not others. Here, of course, if works for the o key. I can slide over and select one. But it won't work for say the g key because there are no alternative there.
The same is true for some punctuation. So I can go into the Punctuation keyboard here and I can tap and hold the question mark and you can see I get two options there. Some of the other keys do it as well. Now the same thing is true of emoji at times. So if I go to the Emoji keyboard here I can see all these different ones. Sometimes if you tap and hold emoji you get alternatives. Usually this has to do with skin tone. So if I go to some of these characters here I can tap and hold and you can see I get different skin tones that I can then select.
Now this is one of my favorite tips. It can sometimes be difficult to find an emoji. There's so many different ones. On the Mac the emoji panel allows you to search for different emoji which is so handy. But you can't do that here. There's no search field. However, you can search by simply typing what you want. So, for instance, if I were to type a word like say pie you can see it comes up with a suggestion there for pie. I can tap that and it replaces the word with the emoji. Also if you wanted to keep the word and use the emoji you can do that as well. So you type a word. When you see one of the suggestions come up hit the spacebar first. The suggestions stay there and then you can tap one of those. Now you have the word and the emoji.
It works for a lot of different emoji characters. It helps if you know the actual name of the emoji. But usually you can get it with a few guesses. So I can do things like mad. I can do things like sad. I can do things like smile. Now you have to have the Predictive keyboard turned on. So under keyboard settings make sure you have Predictive on else you won't see those predictions there at the top and can't use this.
So one of my favorite features on the Mac is using text replacements. You can do it here in iOS as well. At the top of the Settings you've got Text Replacement and you have all of these different words that you can use that will then get replaced by something else. You can easily add one. Say you respond to an email with some text commonly saying I'll get back to your later or something. You could put that as Get Back Later and then have that phrase, get back later, get replaced with several sentences explaining how you'll get back later and how they can get in touch with somebody else if they need immediate assistance, that kind of thing.
Now a very new feature of iOS 13 is the ability to slide type. So you can see that here in keyboard settings. It's called Slide to Type and there's also a setting for Delete Slide-to-Type by Word. So the way to use that is to just use it. You don't have to switch to a special keyboard like you may have done before to Slide to Type. You can do this now with the default keyboard on the iPhone. So you can just basically tap the first letter, slide around to the various letters, and it will then type the word. You don't have to type a space or anything. You just go right into doing the next word like that.
Now that other settings effects how the Delete key works because since I have it turned on if I delete now it deletes the entire word which is useful because a lot of times when you're using Slide to Type it's the word that is wrong and you just want to do it again. Now if you try to slide using the spacebar you get something very different. You get basically a trackpad. If I tap and hold the spacebar you see how all the keys go away. But now I have a cursor and I can move it around. It makes it so easy to place the text insertion cursor wherever you want.
One last tip for the keyboard is not to use the keyboard at all. We've been using that little smiling emoji there at the bottom of the left corner a lot. But there's the one at the bottom right corner as well and tapping that allows you to do some quick dictation. Hello world. So you can use this. It's super handy for replying to messages or anytime that you can talk a little bit easier than you can type.

Comments: 10 Responses to “13 iPhone Keyboard Tips”

Ulrich Maasmeier

4 years ago

For me it’s the world icon, not the smiley one. iOS 13.2 (German)

Greg

When typing temperature degrees such as 37°...holding down the 0 (zero) key gives you the degrees sign. Very helpful post. Thanks Gary

Lubomir

Hello.
I wonder if I can add Bulgarian language to Dictation Languages?

Gary Rosenzweig

Lubomir: I don't see Bulgarian in the list. Request it from Apple to make sure they know people want it.

Bob

Very informative- thanks.
Even if I think that I'm informed on a subject,
you always seem to have
several new informational tidbits
up your sleeve.

spice

On iphone 8plus, when I hit the smiley face it goes to emojiis.

spice: Don't just "hit" it. Hold.

Karl

I really wish Apple would put the numbers above the letters instead of having to press the 123 button all the time.

Christy

Yay for the degree symbol! I have been looking for that. Thank you for a great post, Gary.

Gary Ward

Yeah, now I know where the trackpad went compared to iPad, and I have been wondering about a degree sign for years, always used an asterisk. Thanks once again, always learn something when Gary is talking!

Comments Closed.

13 iPhone Keyboard Tips

Comments: 10 Responses to “13 iPhone Keyboard Tips”

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