How To Type In Morse Code On Your iPhone

A new update to the Gboard keyboard app from Google allows you to type using the dots and dashes of Morse code instead of a traditional keyboard. While this may be nothing more than a novelty for some people, others may actually be able to learn to type faster than using a regular touch screen keyboard. Google also has a nice little mobile website to teach you how to use Morse code.

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

Video Transcript: Here's something fun and may be practical for some people. The Goggle keyboard, called Gboard, now let's you type in Morse Code. Now it's not the first app to do this. There have been a few Morse Code type keyboards for awhile now. Of course it's been a few versions of iOS where you can actually add keyboards and do all sorts of things with interesting keyboards from different companies instead of using the default keyboard. 
Gboard has been around for awhile and has some interesting features and I've talked about it before. You get Gboard by going to the Gboard app in the App Store. Previously you could get this by going to the Goggle App. If you got the Goggle App it included the Gboard keyboard. You're going to want to turn that off, disable that, and use the one from the official Gboard App now because that's the only one that seems to have the Morse Code in there.
If this is your first time you just download the Gboard app. You go into it and the first time you use Gboard you have to set it up. You have to enable it. It walks you through there. Then once you've got it working you have to go to Languages and under Languages you hit Add language. A language listed is now Morse Code. You add that. Once that's done now you have that available as something you can type in.
So let's go into an app that you can type with. Let's just use Notes. In Notes you're going to start using the keyboard here. At the bottom it brings up, I already had the Gboard keyboard enabled, if not you can use that little globe button there at the bottom. You know it rotates through your keyboards and emoji and any other keyboards you have till you get to Gboard. Now I'm going to go to Settings and I'm going to tap and hold that globe and it's going to allow me to go and switch to Morse Code.
So now I've got a Dot and a Dash. I have a space so I don't have to actually pause like I normally would between letters in Morse Code. I've got a Delete key and a Return key as well. So let me see if I can do this. So that worked pretty well. I got an extra space in there by accident. But in general it seems to work really well.
Now why would you want to do this? Well, it turns out you can get really fast with Morse Code. Remember there was a time when all electronic communication was through Morse Code whether it was over a cable or wireless. There were people that got super fast sending Morse Code and you don't even have to worry about receiving it because obviously you're just typing it into your phone.
So, if you can type very quickly in Morse Code or learn how to do so this might be a decent option for you especially if you've never really been comfortable with the onscreen keyboard on a small iPhone screen. So, of course, the problem is you don't know Morse Code, right? Well Goggle has actually kind of thought of that as well. They have a Morse Typing Trainer at morse.withgoggle.com/learn that actually works with this keyboard. So once you've have the keyboard installed you can go to that website and there's a way to learn. So it's going to try and teach you this.
Also, you know, consider typing speeds of Morse Code reached an average of about 40 words per minute during the height of the use of the Morse Code. So if you were somebody working on a teletype machine, prior to wireless, you were expected to do about 40 words per minute which happens to be also the average typing speed of people today. But that's typing speed on a keyboard. Not on a touchscreen. So it's possible that, maybe, Morse Code might allow you to type on your phone faster than you can normally do with the onscreen keyboard.

How To Type In Morse Code On Your iPhone

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