Faster iPhone Typing With Predictive Text

The Predictive Text feature in iOS helps you save taps by trying to predict the next work you want to type and giving you a button to type it with one tap. Predictive text will show you suggestions based on context so sometimes it will seem like magic as it guesses what you want to write before you know. With some practice it can save time and frustration when typing on your small iPhone screen.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: So one of the ways that the iPhone and iPad make it easier for you to type text is something called Predictive Text. This used to be called Quick Type but Apple seems to only refer to it as Predictive Text right now. You can see it in action here. I'm in the Mail app and I'm just going to type a message and you can see the words at the top of the keyboard. It says I, I'm, and And. It's trying to predict what I might want to type now. So as I start to type something like this it will change those words.
Notice as I started typing the word was and I typed w it kind of predicts that maybe one of the things I want to say is was. So I'm actually going to tap the word was rather than the two taps for a and s. Now it's going to make some suggestions. None of those are what I want. I want to say nice and as soon as I type the n the word nice appears. So I can save myself taps by hitting nice. To is in fact what I want to say next. So nice to, and see, have, be, no I want to say talk. When I hit t sure enough talk appears. To you. I'm going to his period now or I can just do two spaces and it does period and a space. 
I and start typing will and with just the w I get will. I want to type send so I hit the s and it predicts that.  You, I'll type t and then h and then a and I might as well finish typing the word that and then space and then i, but it actually before I typed i it had information up there. Then, when I get home. 
You can see I saved quite a few taps there. Now it takes some practice to get used to this. Now if you don't see that stuff at the top of the keyboards, if you don't see those words there, then you want to go to Settings. You can go to the Settings app but you can also tap and hold the little keyboard button. It has a smiley face now at the bottom of the keyboard. You can see I go right to keyboard settings.  But you can get to it also by going to Settings, and then General, and then Keyboard. You can see there's the switch for Predictive. That's what you need to have on in order to see this. 
Now, of course, it also depends upon what type of keyboard you're using. If you're using Custom Keyboard then this might not be available. Also certain apps will have keyboards that are specific to that app. But in general apps, like the Mail app and Notes and such, are going to have this.
Notice if I start typing something and I'm typing like a difficult word, I'm just going to type a bunch of just random things here, and you can see it doesn't have any predictive text. Maybe if I go and you know erase some there it's hard to predict. But I wanted to actually use this particular word, even though it's not a real word, notice I've got the word with quotes around it to the left. That's a really handy way to get around autocorrect. Because if I type space it's going to either mark it as spelled wrong or it's going to try to autocorrect to something. So I can get around that by actually tapping there with the quotes around it and that will then say accept this word even though it's not in the dictionary and you really want to autocorrect it or change it in some way.
So this predictive text little strip here is useful for getting around the autocorrect feature especially when typing names and things in addition to predicting what you type. It takes some practice but not much practice and you can type much faster especially when you're typing real things, not just samples, then you tend to use some longer words and you'll find that you can only type maybe two or three first characters of that word and then see it at the top and then tap it. If you notice it's there you can save yourself lots of taps. I tried practicing this and I found that, especially for things like responding to messages, doing emails, things like that I can type much faster on my iPhone than I could by tapping out each character in the word.
So it's something you might want to give a try to. You'll find that a little work up front can save you a lot of time in the long run.

Comments: 3 Responses to “Faster iPhone Typing With Predictive Text”

Lyn

6 years ago

Great little thing does very much help to type faster, and less taps. Thank you Gary have been following you for years.

Ricardo

Hi Gary, do to know when predictive text will be available for the Dutch language?

Gary Rosenzweig

Ricardo: Sorry, no.

Comments Closed.

Faster iPhone Typing With Predictive Text

Comments: 3 Responses to “Faster iPhone Typing With Predictive Text”

Welcome to MacMost

Free Weekly Newsletter

MacMost Online Courses

Keyboard Shortcuts PDF

Connect with MacMost

MacMost Sections

Popular Tutorials

Information