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Tips: How to Speed Up Your Typing on iPhone & iPad with Secret Keyboard Shortcuts

Tips: How to Speed Up Your Typing on iPhone & iPad with Secret Keyboard Shortcuts

Although most people have developed impressive skills when it comes to typing on the small virtual keyboard of their iPhone and even the larger one on iPads, things are still pretty slow.

And we’re here to help you type even faster – no matter how fast you can type on your device – by sharing a bunch of secret keyboard shortcuts and tips for typing faster on your phone or tablet.

Actually, these tricks we’re going to share are not really secret – they are lesser known and completely underused, so knowing about them will help you a lot when it comes to writing those messages in no time.

So let’s not waste a second and let’s check out below some tips on how to speed up your typing on iPhones or iPads!

1. Tweak the Keyboards menu

This is something you probably did (or didn’t) when you first got your phone or tablet and never went there since.

You should check out the Keyboards menu in your Settings and turn on all the relevant stuff that will help you type a lot faster.

You can turn on things like Auto-Capitalization of first letters so you don’t have to go through this, spelling check, auto correct (if you want a lot of funny and sometimes frustrating corrections – so maybe keep this turned off!) and so on.

Just check the menu out and enable all the options that will help you when typing.

Pro tip: Turning these on, will let you double tap the Space key to insert a full stop and auto capitalization will automatically Capitalize the first letter of your next sentence. Easy peasy and fast!

2. Quickly add .com, .org and so on

Sometimes, when you want to share a website you know with somebody, you don’t have a link to paste. You don’t have to manually type address.com or .org or whatever (at least not the last part).

Just long press the period key and choose the suffix you want to add. This doesn’t work in all apps, but it does where it matters!

3. Split your iPad’s keyboard in two

Typing with your thumbs on an iPad is not as easy as it is on an iPhone. But this neat little trick will allow you to split the keyboard in two, basically making it easier for typing with your thumbs only.

Simply put two fingers at the same time on the keyboard – one to the left and one to the right – them drag to the sides. This will split the keyboard in half, making it easier for thumb-typing.

When you want to revert to a one-piece virtual keyboard, simply tap and hold with your fingers on each half of the keyboard and drag them together!

4. Quickly add numbers

If you want to skip a few extra taps when you want to add a number, you can easily do so by tapping and holding the numbers button (the 123 on the left) and with your finger still on the display, drag it to the number.

When you release the finger, the keyboard will automatically revert to text mode, so you’ll save a couple of taps here!

5. How to quickly insert special characters

This is already general knowledge in most cases, but for those who don’t know how to insert special characters, here it is: simply tap and hold any letter on the keyboard, and a menu with all the special characters related to that particular letter will appear above it. Simply swipe your finger over the letter you want to insert and you’re done!

If the special character you want does not appear in the menu above the letter, you should change the language from default (English) to your language.

Simply tap the globe button and hold it: a menu will appear, showing you the available languages. Select the appropriate one and you will now have all the special characters for that language.

6. Undo typing or anything else

Did you ever get mad after doing something wrong when typing (like pasting the wrong word or cutting an entire phrase you’ve written) – so mad that you started shaking your device in frustration?

Well, this means that found out how to enable the “undo option”! Yes, this is what you should do: simply shake your device and an “undo” button will pop up on the screen, allowing you to undo your previous action, no matter if it was typing, pasting, cutting text or anything similar.

7. ENABLE CAPS LOCK ONLY

If for whatever reason you want to enable this, you can: double tap the Shift key quickly on your keyboard and all the letters you type from that moment on will be capitalized. In order to revert to normal, tap the Shift key once.

8. Use the Quick Type (or hide it)

The Quick Type option is usually really useful on iPhones and iPads as it predicts what you want to type and you can usually get longer words typed there a lot faster.

In order to use this, after turning it on in the Keyboard shortcuts, simply start typing and suggestions will appear above the keyboard: for example, if you start typing “fort” – “fortunate” will appear in the suggestions list and if that’s the word you want to type, all you have to do is tap it and it will be written instantly.

If, for some reason, you don’t find this option useful, you can simply disable it while writing by tapping and dragging down the Quick Type bar.

9. How to undo autocorrect

If you have auto-correct turned on and you manage to spot a wrong correction it makes before sending that message and becoming an internet sensation, you can easily undo it.

Immediately after autocorrect corrects your typing (and doesn’t do it right), simply tap the backspace key and the word will be reverted back to the one you’ve typed. Problem solved!

10. Create text expansion shortcuts

You can easily instruct your device to turn sets of letters into words. For example, when you type “OMG” it can be turned into “oh my god”.

If there are specific phrases you use often, it wouldn’t hurt to create shortcuts to save time when writing them.

So for example, if you often write “I’ll be home soon, my love, but don’t wait for me!” you can simply create a shortcut and have that appear in your text whenever you type lieee. This is obviously just an example as the possibilities are endless.

In order to create these shortcuts, go to your Settings – General – Keyboard – Text Replacement. You can add there as many shortcuts as you want, but in order to use them, make sure you have the Shortcuts option turned on in the Keyboard menu.

Bonus: Get an external keyboard

If all these don’t help and getting an actual physical keyboard is possible, then you can easily do so. Just purchase a bluetooth keyboard for iPhone or iPad (affiliate link), pair it with your device and start typing like a pro.

But I am sure that all the other methods above will help you speed up your typing by a ton anyway!

Hopefully you found my guide useful. If you did and you think your friends could use some tips and tricks to speed up their own typing on their device, don’t hesitate to share this article with the world!