Typing is probably one of the most fundamental things that we all do on our iPhones,
yet for a lot of people, it’s really difficult to type quickly and accurately. I reckon I’ve
got it pretty well figured out for me, so in this video I’m going to share all of the tips I
know for how to type quickly and accurately on your iPhone, no matter your situation.
OK, let’s get into it.
**Keyboard as Trackpad**
One of the biggest drawbacks of your iPhone is the tiny screen, which is most apparent when you’re
trying to position your cursor somewhere in a passage of text to fix a mistake. Thankfully,
there’s a hack built into your iPhone that makes fixing mistakes really easy to do. If
you press down on the space bar and keep your finger or thumb there, you can then
move your finger or thumb left and right, or up and down, or pretty much any direction,
just like you would a laptop trackpad. Your cursor will move around the screen, and you simply drop
it where you need it to go. You can then fix whatever mistakes need fixing, quickly and easily.
**Practice using your thumbs**
If you’re able to, typing with both thumbs is much
quicker and more accurate than typing by prodding the screen with a single finger,
so practice this method if you’re able to. Ultimately, you’re going to want to get
into the habit of holding your iPhone with two hands, and using your thumbs to tap each key,
your left thumb roughly covering the left of the keyboard, your right covering the right.
Also, a related tip is to download a typing practice app from the app store. You can use
whatever one you like, although I’ve been enjoying the one on screen now,
which I’ll link to in the description of the video. The app shows random words,
that you’ll then type along, and the app will track your typing score,
giving you the chance to not only practice, but to track how you’re improving over time.
**Download a Third Party Keyboard**
One of the most common complaints that I see from iPhone owners in the comments of any video that
I make about typing, is that the keyboard is too small for their fingers. Apple don’t really give
you any options to increase the size of the keyboard within the iPhone, which I find kind
of weird, but you can download third party keyboards and use those instead if you like.
I can’t make any specific recommendations in this video, although Typewise does seem
to be a good offering, and they have a pretty good reputation in terms of data privacy too,
from what I can tell, which is of course important,
as you’re going to be using this keyboard to type in everything on your phone,
and so you want to be sure that the data you transmit is secure and private.
Once installed and setup, which you would do by following the instructions in the app,
you can then activate the keyboard by selecting it, by tapping and holding the globe icon in the
bottom left, and choosing your keyboard from the list. You can then type away,
and that keyboard will be the default moving forward, unless you change it again.
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to accompany this video, and you can access it by joining my membership programme, where for a small
monthly fee, you’ll get access to all video PDFs moving forward, plus the growing library of old
ones. Just follow the link in the description of this video that says ‘Become a Channel Member’.
**Hold for accents**
If you have to input accents or special characters, perhaps because you type
predominantly in English as an example, but often email people with non-English names,
you can quickly access those accents and characters without having to
switch keyboards. Simply press and hold on the relevant letter.
So if I press and hold on the letter ‘e’ for example,
you can see the range of accents available. The same on the letter ‘o’,
or the letter ‘a’. You then simply move your thumb or finger over to the relevant
character to select it, and then lift your finger or thumb off of the screen.
The letter options here are hopefully pretty obvious, but there are also
some options in the special characters part of the keyboard too. For example,
pressing and holding the currency symbol will bring up a range of different currency options
to choose from. Pressing and holding the speech mark option gives different
variations here. Pressing and holding the zero button gives you a degree symbol.
Try this out for yourself, as you may well find that a symbol or character
you’ve often needed to input but not been able to has been right there all along.
**************************Text Replacement**************************
There’s a feature in the iPhone that allows you to take long phrases or passages of text that you
input all the time, and have them automatically input whenever you type in a short one. One of
the more commonly used ones is to have your email address automatically input whenever
you type the phrase ‘@@’, or to have your phone number input when you type in a custom phrase,
I use the phrase ‘mynum’ for this but you could of course use whatever you like.
To set one up, head to Settings, then General then Keyboard, and tap into Text Replacement.
Tap the plus button in the upper right. Phrase is the phrase that you’d like your iPhone to input
for you, the long passage of text in other words, while Shortcut is what you’re going
to type in. So you can see on the screen now, how we would set up the email address shortcut.
Then, to input it, simply type the shortcut, and as soon as you tap the
space bar after you’ve typed it, your phone will input the phrase.
One of the most common complaints about this feature is the inability to input line breaks
in the phrase. So inputting an address for example, it all sits on one line,
which doesn’t look right. You can actually input line breaks, with a bit of a weird workaround,
that requires you to have a Mac computer connected to your Apple ID.
On your Mac, open Settings, then choose Keyboard, then Text Replacement. You should
see any keyboard shortcuts you’ve created on your iPhone here, synced via iCloud. Next,
open a text app on your Mac, I’d recommend Notes but you can use what you like,
and create a blank note. Input the phrase exactly as you’d like it, complete with line breaks,
and then copy it. Then go back to Settings, tap the plus button to create a new shortcut,
input the shortcut in the ‘Replace’ field, and in the ‘With’ field,
right-click and choose Paste. It might not look like the information has pasted correctly,
but it has. Choose Add, and then jump back to your iPhone, and you’ll see that you can
input a passage of text complete with line breaks, using a text replacement.
**The Proper Weekly**
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**Haptic Keyboard**
One of the biggest disconnects, in my opinion, between typing on your iPhone and typing on
your computer, is the feel of it. Tapping on a screen doesn’t provide you with any feedback,
which is totally unlike typing on a computer keyboard, where you can feel the keys as you’re
tapping them. Since iOS16, your iPhone has a feature called Haptic Keyboard, which uses the
taptic engine built into your iPhone to create a little ‘tick’ feeling each time you touch a key.
I can’t really demo it in a video, I can only really explain it to you,
but it really does work, and honestly once you’ve gotten used to using this,
you’ll probably find it really weird to type without it.
To enable it, head to Settings, then Sounds & Haptics, then Keyboard Feedback. In here,
toggle Haptic on. Also, if you’re interested, this is where you would disable Sound when typing,
the little click click click sound that you sometimes hear,
and I say this is where you disable it because honestly,
you should be disabling it, nobody wants to hear your iPhone click when you’re typing.
One thing to point out about Haptic keyboard however,
is that Apple themselves have said that it does use battery life. I’ve not noticed
a terrible drain since I’ve had it on, but if you’re a power user who wants to
squeeze the most battery life out of your phone no matter what, be aware of this.
**Shake to undo**
Quick tip this, if you make a mistake while you’re typing on your iPhone,
simply shake your iPhone, and you’ll be given the option to undo whatever you just typed.
I think this is a handy little feature, but if you’re someone who shakes your
iPhone quite frequently, and find that the constant undo options are annoying,
you can disable this, and you would do that by going to Settings,
then Accessibility, then Touch, and toggling Shake to Undo off.
**Period and Caps Lock**
Another quick couple of tips, but important to know when typing,
if you want to input a period, we call it a full stop here in the UK,
rather than hitting the button, simply double-tap the space bar.
And if you wish to type in all-caps,
rather than having to hold the shift key down or constantly press it,
simply double-tap the shift key to switch caps lock on. Repeat the process to switch it off.
**Choose your keyboard**
You can use multiple keyboards, both the in-built different language keyboards,
and third party keyboards if you wish. You can of course only use one at a time,
but switching between them is quick and easy when you know what you’re doing.
To switch to a different keyboard, tap and hold the globe or emoji button down in the
bottom left corner. Any keyboards you have setup will be available here. To
enable another language keyboard, tap on Keyboard settings, then choose Keyboards,
then choose Add New Keyboard, and select the keyboard you’d like to add in.
Also, when you’re in the keyboard selection menu, notice the options at the bottom. These
are one-handed keyboard options, and the one on the left is for a left-handed user,
the one on the right is for a right handed user. The keyboard shifts and bunches over
to one side, making it easier to use the keyboard one-handed, if you wish.
**Swipe keyboard**
Android owners have been swearing by this feature for years now, and while the iPhone has had this
for a long time as well, a lot of iPhone owners have no idea it exists. You can swipe to type. So,
instead of lifting your finger or thumb off the keyboard each time you input a letter,
to then move onto the next one, keep your finger down and swipe to the next letter in your word.
Continue this for each letter in the word, and only lift your finger or thumb off the
keyboard when you’ve finished typing the word out. This might seem weird at first, but it
does work. If you’re inputting a double-letter, like the two ‘t’s in the word letter for example,
just swipe over the letter ‘t’ the one time, and your phone is smart enough to figure out what word
you’re trying to type, based on what you’ve already input. It takes some getting used to,
but it really works, and it’s definitely worth trying out to see how you get on with it.
**Easy text selection**
Selecting text that you’ve written, perhaps because you want to edit it,
is actually really easy on the iPhone. The problem is, if you don’t know what you’re doing,
it’s easy to find yourself just prodding around on the screen in the hopes that you get your
phone to do what you want, so just to be clear, here’s how to select different amounts of text.
If you tap once, with the keyboard showing at the bottom,
that will drop your cursor wherever you tapped.
If you double-tap in a specific part of the text, that will select a word.
You then have contextual options above, like cut, copy, paste etc.
If you triple tap, that will select a paragraph of text.
By the way, it’s good to get into the habit of using those contextual options,
as some of them are really good. With a word selected, replace allows you to quickly swap
that word out for an alternative. ‘Find selection’ finds all of the instances of
that word in the text. ‘Look Up’ looks the word up for you in the dictionary. Translate allows
you to quickly translate it, and search web lets you google that particular word or term.
Also, final thing to show you when it comes to finger gestures, and I’m not sure if this is
necessarily easier or more difficult to do, but you can pinch and push to copy and paste. So,
with some text selected, you can pinch to copy, and then push to paste.
**Landscape mode**
This might be really obvious to many, but you’d be amazed how many people I speak to who either
didn’t know, or forgot that they could do this. If you struggle to type with your
iPhone in the typical portrait orientation, switch to landscape mode while you’re typing,
and then jump back to portrait mode when you’re done. You’ll need to ensure that
you don’t have Orientation Lock on for this to work by the way, which you would do by jumping
into Control Centre, and ensuring that this option shown here is switched off.
**Dictation**
I’ve saved this tip until last because I guess it’s not really a typing tip as such, but by
far the quickest way to type on your iPhone is to not type, but use dictation instead. Since iOS16,
Apple have made significant improvements to dictation, and whilst it’s not perfect,
it’s better than it’s ever been, and most likely good enough for most people.
To dictate, when you’ve got the keyboard on-screen, tap this microphone and begin
talking. It’s as simple as that, gone are the days of having to input punctuation,
your iPhone will have a go at doing this for you. If anything isn’t to your liking,
you can pause partway through the dictation,
and move the cursor around like I’ve already shown you, and make the changes you need to make.
******End******
So there you go, that’s how I use my iPhone to type quickly and accurately,
with a number of tips that you can make use of. What do you think,
anything that should have been mentioned here that wasn’t? Drop me a comment and let me know.
And as ever, if you found this video useful, do please consider leaving me a like,
and subscribing to my channel for more content like this in the future.
See you on the next video.