Comparing the 4 Ways To Type On Your iPhone

If you have trouble typing quickly on your iPhone, maybe you haven't tried some of the other options available. Instead of typing each letter, you can use predictive text and swiping to pick up the pace. Or, you can just dictate. The best way is probably to combine these methods as needed.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at the four different ways that you can type on your iPhone.
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So when typing on your iPhone it's never going to be as fast as using a full size physical keyboard. But the virtual keyboard does offer a number of options to speed things up. You could basically break it down into four different ways to type on your iPhone. Which one is going to be better for you is subjective. But it's a good idea to try all four and think about which one you want to use. 
First let's look at just typing regularly. This could mean either using one finger like a lot of people do or both thumbs. Either way you do it you need to type out each individual letter. So it goes something like this. (Demonstrating typing). Now of course the speed in which you do this depends upon how often you do it. I'm actually a little faster than this when holding an iPhone in my hand. I have it placed flat on my desk to record the screen right now. You could also do it with two thumbs which honestly I use a lot of the time too and that could speed things up as you've got two different digits actually typing at the same time. 
Now the second way to do it is very similar to the first way. You're doing the same thing but you're using Predictive Text as much as you can at the top. That's those three words that appear above the keyboard. So right now it says I, thanks, you. It's trying to predict what I might start typing based on my previous history. If you don't see those there you can tap and hold down here and then you could go to Keyboard Settings. In Keyboard Settings make sure you turn on Predictive right there to see it. So let's try this sentence but using Predictive Text as much as possible. So I start typing and as soon as I see the word I want I can tap it to continue. Otherwise just continue typing and press Space. So this sentence isn't going to be ideal because it's an odd sentence. It's not something you would normally type. Right here you can see I can save three presses by tapping here. It types the c, the k, and space. But other words it's not going to get because why would you use this sentence in normal conversation. (Finger is typing). Now when you type something wrong this could help a lot. For instance if I were to miss a letter there you could see it still comes up as Predictive here. So I can tap it. Then even though it goes to a new space I can still put a period and it knows to go back and remove that space with the period there. 
This actually works much better in practice when you're using real words in real sentences. Something like this. (Demonstrating typing). Notice how I can avoid typing most of the word wonderful like that. 
The third way is called Swipe Typing or Quick Type. It's just when you run your finger over the keyboard going to each letter in the word you're typing. Like this. You could see here it gives me alternatives so you want to pay attention. (Continuing demonstrating).  Like Predictive Text this works much better when you're actually typing a real sentence. (More typing demonstration)>
Now the fourth way is to not actually use your fingers at all. But to speak! So you've got this microphone here at the bottom and it works just like you would expect. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog period. Thanks for the wonderful gift period. So you can see here the clear winner in speed is actually talking. But they all have their advantages and disadvantages. Talking doesn't really work very well when you're in a noisy environment or when you could be disturbing other people. If you're sitting in a cubicle at work or a desk in a classroom you can't just start talking to your phone. It's going to pick up what other people are saying first of all. Second of all people are going to hear what it is you're texting and it may bother them. So you can't use that in all situations. 
For the other three you're speed really depends on practice. The more you use one of the three options the faster you'll get at it. So which one is going to be better depends upon not just what you like but which one you actually use and how often you use it. If you type a lot you can pick one of these as the method for typing you're going to get faster and faster at it. It probably would be better using that particular method than any other. So right now if you try to compare all these methods probably you'd be fastest at the one that you use the most although speaking might beat that anyway. 
So sometimes combining them is the best way to do it. You can start off tapping every single letter and then move into using the Predictive Text more and more. You can start Swipe Typing while you're tapping. You don't have to pick one mode or the other even in the middle of a sentence. You can certainly speak the text and then go and correct anything it gets wrong later on. 
So here you can see I've spoken something and it has typed it out. It got it nearly right. But a quick review and I could just make some corrections very easily and now I've got it perfect in much less time than if I had typed  the entire thing out. If there's any word that you got wrong sometimes you'll get suggestions if you just double tap it to select and notice at the bottom you get suggestions there. So sometimes if it gets something  kind of laughably wrong just a quick double tap on the word and you could select the right one without having to type anything. 
The important thing is to know about each one of these. If you've been stuck using just one maybe it's worthwhile exploring the others to see if they work better for you. Also some people may enjoy switching from time to time especially if you type a lot. It could help out with fatigue on typing on the virtual keyboard sometime if you talk instead of typing when it's convenient. 
So which one of these four methods do you primarily use to type on your iPhone and why? Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 4 Responses to “Comparing the 4 Ways To Type On Your iPhone”

Robert

4 months ago

Great tutorial - but how do I get those three words above the keyboard for hints? I'm using Version iOS 15.3.1 on iPhone 13 Pro Max. Thank You

Gary Rosenzweig

Robert: See 1:52.

Carl Kettler

Also worth consideration is using a bluetooth keyboard to actually type on your phone. I often have a small, 5"x11" QWERTY keyboard with me. I've even been known to prop my phone up at a bar and use a full keyboard to capture my thoughts in the moment. Unlike Voice-to-text, this method is not bothered by background noise and conversations and it allows me to quickly capture full sentences and paragraphs. The combination of a phone and BT keyboard is still much smaller than pulling out a computer

Tony Murray

Really interesting tutorial, I always learn from you. I’ve been using dictation in different forms for many years, now with my iPhone, my iPad Pro 27 inch. Now Apple have improved things quite a lot, and it’s free of course. I find dictation extremely useful even in reasonably crowded conditions.

Comparing the 4 Ways To Type On Your iPhone

Comments: 4 Responses to “Comparing the 4 Ways To Type On Your iPhone”

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