36 iPhone Keyboard Tips

Here are some iPhone tips to help you type faster, edit easier, and be more productive with the iPhone virtual keyboard.
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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here are a whole bunch of iPhone keyboard tips to help you type and manipulate text faster. 
So first let's talk about typing periods. You can, of course, type a period by tapping the 123 button and then tapping period. But you can also do it by just double tapping the spacebar and it automatically puts a period and then one space. If it's not working for you, you want to check in Settings, then go to General, and then scroll down to Keyboard. Go in there and look for a setting you may have turned off. For instance at the bottom here you've got the period shortcut. If you have that turned Off then double tapping space won't work. 
Now if you need to type an accent mark or any common character variation you can do that by tapping the letter but holding it. So if you tap and hold e you can see how you get all these different variations. Then you can select the one you want and then release. You get that accent mark or character variation. Lots of different characters have these, like here's for the o, here's for g, here's for n. 
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Now if you want to capitalize a word you can do it by tapping the Shift key there and then tapping the letter. But you can do it in a single motion by tapping and holding and then moving over to the letter and releasing. Notion that the keyboard doesn't have a caps lock key but if you do want to turn on caps lock you can do it by double tapping on the Shift key there and you can see now it changes to have this Caps Lock symbol there and now you can continue typing in all capital letters. To turn it Off just tap once on that Shift key. 
If you want to type a number you can, of course, tap the 123 key there and then type the numbers that you want. If you just need to type a single digit though you can do it a similar way that I showed you for doing capital letters. You can tap and hold 123 slide over to the  number, and release and then it types the number and it goes back to the regular keyboard. 
Now for typing symbols you can use a combination of two of the previous tips. One is of course you can go to the 123 key right there and you get a variety of symbols. But notice for a lot of them you can tap and hold and you'll get variations. Like all the different currencies here. If you tap and hold the period you can get an ellipsis. If you tap and hold the slash you can get a backslash. 
You can also combine this with tapping the Shift or Number key and dragging. So you can be with letters here and you can tap and old 123, go over to say the colon and then release. You can also tap 123 and then tap the other symbols key, right here, hold, and then drag over to one of these and then release. 
Now, unfortunately, if the special symbol you want can't be found by tapping and holding a key on the keyboard you can't really type it on the keyboard. The alternatives are to get third party keyboards, which I'll talk about later, but you can also just copy and paste from somewhere else. For instance you can go to this wikipedia page for unicode characters. If you scroll down here you'll find a ton of different unicode characters and you can even search this page and find the one you want. So you can just tap and hold the selected character here, for instance, and then Copy and then tap here and Paste to paste that character in. 
To type an emoji character you tap the symbol here at the bottom left. If you have more keyboards installed you may have to tap it and hold and then switch to the emoji keyboard. Then you can go through the different types of emoji characters here and find one and just tap it to type it. But you can also tap here and then type to search for the character you want and then tap it to enter that. 
You also can get emoji character suggestions here if you simply what you want. So, for instance, if I were to type pizza here one of the suggestions is the emoji character for that. It will replace the word if I select it. So if you want to smile you can type, smile, and you'll see you get different ones here. Tap it to replace what you typed with the emoji. 
Another thing you can do is if you go back to System Settings and then into General and Keyboards, go to Text Replacement. Here you can add text replacements where you have something you would type, a shortcut here, and then you can have what it's replaced with. So, for instance, if you're always typing a certain emoji character you can have something as a shortcut here. Something you would never normally type, like maybe e followed by pizza all in one word like that. Then here for the phrase you can insert the character, like that. Now when you type epizza followed by a space or return it will replace one with the other. 
But you can also have phrases that are really long, several words or even paragraphs of text that you paste in here. So if there is something you commonly type you can add it here to make it easier to type the next time. In addition you can enter in a phrase that isn't even a shortcut right here. So you can type something like this, which isn't a real word altogether, and don't even add a short cut. Now I'll save this and it will save here and you'll see it here but it just has itself as its own shortcut. What does this do? Well, it adds it to predictive text, kind of like adding it to the dictionary. So I start typing this word and you can see it's going to appear here, so I can actually use it here. But better still it's not going to appear as a misspelled word. 
Now this Predictive Text Bar here is great and it will help you type faster, if you remember to use it. But if you never use it and you want more space to be able to see the text you can turn it Off right here in the Keyboard Settings. So now you can see it is gone and I've got a little bit more room to see my note. 
If you type a word, and maybe it's a special word like a name, and it corrects it, like that, you can get back the original word very easily by using the Delete button here. When you go back to the end of that word you can see that it has the original word there and you can tap this and it will put back that original word. Notice also, while you're typing it, in the Predictive Text, it has the word that you're typing exactly as it is in quotes here on the left. So if that is your intention to use that word simply tap that and it will accept the word and put a space. 
Now to Delete any character you just typed you can tap the Delete Key once. Tap it again and it will delete the next one. Tap it again and it deletes the next one. But if you tap and Hold it will actually delete character-by-character and then start jumping word for word. So you can move a little faster. You can also simply select text to delete it. 
Now if you tap once in your text it is going to put the cursor there. But if you double tap on a word it will select the entire word. If you triple tap on a word it will select the entire paragraph. Now that you have it selected you can, of course, use all the things in the Context Menu here. But you can also tap the Delete Key to delete the entire selection or just start typing and it will replace the selection with what you are typing. 
Instead of tapping each individual letter on the keyboard to type you can slide to type. So you just tap the first letter and then slide to each letter in the word. You can see it here. If I tap t and slide to h and then slide to e and release I get the. Then if I tap q and then over to u i c and k and release I get quick. I can always use one of the suggestions up here if it didn't get it quite right when I did it before. You don't have to be perfect with this. It's going to try to look for the closest match. So even if you miss a letter or hit the letter next to it quite often it is going to get it right anyway. 
Now there's also to make it easier to type on your iPhone a holding it with on hand. You can make the keyboard smaller and move it to one side or the other. Tap the button at the bottom left and then you see these two variations around the regular keyboard. So, for instance, I can use this one here and you can see how it compresses the keyboard to the right. So if I'm holding the iPhone with my right hand it's easier for me to reach all the keys with my thumb. You've got this little button here that you can tap to expand it or you can just go back in here and choose the regular keyboard. 
Now in the Keyboard Settings you can go to Keyboards here at the top and by default you should have your local keyboard and the emoji keyboard. But you can also add a new keyboard here and you can search for all of these different keyboards. So, for instance, if I wanted to add, say, a French keyboard I can do that by selecting one of these. Let's add this. Now, if I want to add it as a separate keyboard I choose Add New Keyboard and then I choose one of the variations here, like this one, and Done. Now when I want to switch keyboards notice how the little smiley face is going from the bottom left. It's now right here but I can tap and hold and I can still choose the English keyboard and the emoji keyboard. But I now have this new one and I can switch to that. A quick tap will switch between them. Choosing the right keyboard not only makes the keys match what you expect but also the Predictive Text and spelling will match that. 
Let's add the same one, but this time I'm going to add to the English/US keyboard. So it's going to have a bi-lingual keyboard. So now I can see I just got this one keyboard that is English and French here. The idea behind this is that I can type in either language and it will look for spellings and predictions for both languages. Notice, with this bi-lingual keyboard I can select the actual layout I want. So if I want to choose one of the French layouts instead of one of the English ones I can. 
Now you may notice when I went to add a keyboard in addition to all the languages here that are built into iOS you've also got third party keyboards that will appear here if you have an app installed that includes one. So the way to get third party keyboards is to add the app for that keyboard and it automatically adds the keyboard listed here. You often need to run the app and maybe go through some steps in order for it to appear here first. If you go to the App Store and search for Keyboards you'll come up with a whole bunch of different apps that add third party keyboards to your iPhone. 
For editing there's a bunch of different things you can do. For instance, of course, you can tap at a particular spot to move the cursor there. But if you tap-and-hold you'll get this little magnifier here so you can more precisely place the cursor exactly where you want. 
There's also the Trackpad Mode. You go down to Space. Tap-and-Hold space and all of the letters go away. Now you can drag around on the keyboard like a trackpad and you can see how I can position the cursor this way. 
Now when you select some text you can, of course, use the Context Menu here to Cut, Copy and Paste. But you can also use three fingers and pinch inward to copy. Watch what happens when I do that. You can see the word Copy appear at the top there. Now I can go somewhere else and I can use three fingers and spread them apart and it will paste, like that. You can see the word Paste appear at the top there. 
You can also select large sections. I'm going to triple tap here to select all of this. With that selected you can tap-and-hold and then drag this section to another part of your document. 
Now using Undo and Redo is a big part of editing text. So you can change something or maybe delete something and then decide that you want to undo it. One way is to simply shake your iPhone, like this, and you can see you get a prompt there for Undo Typing. Now you can tap Undo and it works like that. 
Another thing you can do is use three-fingers and swipe. Swipe to the left and it will Undo, like that. Swipe with three-fingers to the right and it will Redo. 
Now there are more keyboard settings than what appear in Settings, General, Keyboard. For instance, if you go down to Sounds & Haptics you can go look for the Keyboard Feedback Section. You can turn On or Off Sound whether you hear an audible click when you tap on a key and also whether or not you get actual haptic feedback. If you feel a vibration when you tap a key. 
Under Accessibility there are some things that you can find as well. There's Hover Text. Now we're not going to use Hover Text. That will make text for reading appear larger. We're going to go down to Hover Typing and we're going to turn that On. What happens now is that whatever you were typing will also appear here. The idea is to make it easier for you to see what you're typing. 
Back here in Settings you have a lot of control over the Font and Size and the Color and all of that. So you can make it much bigger, in that little display area, than the document you're actually typing into. 
Still in Accessibility under Display & Text Size you can choose Bold Text. Now that makes text Bold in a variety of different places. One of those places is the keyboard. So notice how you've got Bold letters here in the keyboard. But you have to put up with them everywhere. You can't just turn it on for the keyboard and not everywhere else. 
At the top level of Accessibility if you go into Keyboards & Typing you'll also find access to Hover Typing here. In addition you'll find Typing Feedback. Go into here and you can get Feedback as you type. So you can have each character spoken to you. You can have words spoken to you. It can even speak the Suggestions. So, for instance, if I turn on Speak Words then as I type (this) with each word I type I get feedback. This can help reduce errors.
Here back up a level there's also Show Lower Case Keys which should be turned On by Default. If I turn it Off then notice the keyboard shows all capital letters even if I'm typing lower case. So using the Shift Key here doesn't actually change the keys at all. Which can make it a little tricky but if you have difficulty seeing the letters on the keyboard because they are lower case this is handy. 
By the way a lot of the other things here in Keyboards & Typing have to do with connecting a Bluetooth keyboard to your iPhone which you certainly can do. You can use one of Apple's Bluetooth Keyboards but you can also get these portable ones and then pair them with your iPhone and then type on a real keyboard rather than the virtual one. Then you've got a variety of different settings here that apply to hardware keyboards.
Now a new feature in iOS 18 is called Math Notes. It is usually used in an app like Notes here to do math equations and get the result. So, for instance, I can type 1 and then + and 5 and if I type an equals = I'll see the answer. If I use Return here the answer sticks in there. I can even come back to this equation here and change it like this and it will update. 
Now, despite this being called Math Notes it actually works in all sorts of other apps. For instance, here I am in Mail and I can use it here to do calculations as well. Like that. 
 
A few last tricks. One is if you need to get rid of the keyboard, say you want to just read the text now. You're not adding anything new to it. To do that you swipe down in the middle of the screen. Not over the keyboard! That won't work. But if you start here and then you swipe down you can see the keyboard goes away. To bring it back just tap in the text as if you're going to type. 
Don't forget about dictation. It's this little button here at the bottom right. You don't have to dictate everything. You can just turn it on for a quick sentence and then continue typing. You can even type while you're dictating. So keep that in mind especially if you're getting frustrated with typing a large passage of text it can really speed things up. 
Finally, if you have an iPhone with a larger screen, so this doesn't work on all models, just the ones that have larger screens, you can turn your iPhone horizontally and then you get a larger keyboard. So if you find it a little easier to type on this wider keyboard with larger keys you can do it this way. It's something easy to forget about and certainly it makes it harder to view what it is that your typing because there is less space here, but it certainly can help move things along if you've got a lot of text to type.  Keep in mind it may not work in all apps. Some apps are locked into portrait mode and won't go into landscape. So I hope you found these iPhone keyboard tips useful. 
Thanks for watching.
Comments: 5 Responses to “36 iPhone Keyboard Tips”

Joel
3 weeks ago
second-to-last point about dictation: any tips on how to make it more useful? it seems the past 5 years voice-to-text has deteriorated significantly.
around our house we're always discovering we've sent some nonsensical message because dictation got something as simple as "dinner is ready" wrong. (My wife caught one at the last second that had changed something she said to a seriously profane word. Not helpful.)
Gary Rosenzweig
Joel: Why do you think it has "deteriorated significantly?" Seems to me it has become more accurate and feature-rich.
Always review what was dictated before sending. Remember audio quality if key: mic nearer to mouth, speak clearly, avoid background noise.
Stephen Goodrick, Sr
2 weeks ago
Great tips to save time messaging, Gary.
A. Wortmann
Of all the Apple-specific websites I check almost daily, I always save MacMost for last. Why: this is the only site where I, as a very experienced Apple user over the decades, always learn incredibly important simplifications. Thank you Gary, you have the rare ability to present complex systems in detail in a didactically appealing and useful way. As with this comprehensive keyboard advice.
Sheldon
1 week ago
Thanks bunches
36 iPhone Keyboard Tips

Comments: 5 Responses to “36 iPhone Keyboard Tips”

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