Both the iPhone and iPad have a virtual touch keyboard. Logical, because otherwise you wouldn’t be able to type in any text. The thing has several nice features, which you may not know exist yet.
The virtual keyboard of the iPad actually knows most of the tricks. So let’s take a look at that first. If certain tips or tricks in this article also work for the iPhone apply, we will inform you immediately! Certainly for newer users of the iPad, there will be little exciting to see about the keyboard at first glance.
It appears when you need it, after tapping on text field in your browser for example, or after starting a new document in your word processor app. You can then tap and you’re done!
By the way: since a while it is also possible to type ‘sweeping’ in Dutch. Swipe from letter to letter without taking your finger off the screen. Takes some getting used to, but can work a lot faster than just tapping, especially on the iPhone!
Accents on letters
For the very green beginners (and this also applies to the iPhone!): to put accents on letters, hold down a key with a vowel (e,y,u,i,o,a) a little longer. You will now see a block of letters with all possible accent shapes. Tap on the desired instance and you’re done.
Shrink keyboard
Okay, back to the more surprising possibilities. First, you can shrink the onscreen keyboard on the iPad. make on it keyboard a pinch with two fingers and you suddenly see the much more modest telephone keypad. You can then drag it anywhere on the screen.
This trick sometimes comes in handy if you have several windows in split-view with possibly a floating window over them. The regular large keyboard can then – certainly in landscape view – take up far too much space to be practical. The floating mini keyboard is a lot more convenient then.
To return the keyboard to its normal size, make a spreading movement on the small keyboard with two fingers.
Split keys (with a big ‘but’)
There is also a sort of happy medium in terms of keyboard size in the form of a split screen keyboard. Note: This trick only works on iPads with a screen size smaller than 11 inches. Apple considers the larger screens pointless for this feature; there is a good chance that this function will simply no longer work in a few years.
For now: do you have a more compact iPad with a screen diameter of 10.5 inches or less? Then activate the split keyboard by swiping both thumbs over the on-screen keyboard to the edges. You will now see a shared copy that is somewhat smaller than the regular button shelf. Practical, for example, for anyone who wants to tap with his or her thumbs. Or just again if you want the keyboard to be less dominant in the picture.
To restore a normal glued-together keyboard, tap the keyboard button at the very bottom right of the right-hand part of the on-screen keyboard; keep pressing until you see a menu. Swipe to the Combine option and everything is back to how it was!
Add keyboard language
If you often type in different languages, you will notice that specific letters and characters for certain non-Dutch languages ​​are not available on your on-screen keyboard. Sometimes it is just a few characters, or – in the case of Russian, for example – simply everything is missing. In short: adding – just to name a few – a German, French, Polish, Spanish or whatever keyboard language is practical sometimes.
You do this through the app Settings to start. Tap in it General and then Keyboard. Then tap Keyboards and then on Add keyboard. Choose from one of the many available languages. If you have added a language, it will appear in the overview of available languages Keyboards.
By default, Dutch and Emoji are available there on an iPad and iPhone set up in the Netherlands, in our example now enriched by a third. Tapping on a keyboard language often makes additional options available, choose – just to name a few – for a QWERTY or AZERTY layout.
Once you have installed a keyboard, you can switch between the different languages ​​in the on-screen keyboard (which you will see as soon as an app can be tapped) by tapping the globe in the bottom left corner of the keyboard.
That is a cyclical action, in other words: if you have installed several keyboards, you choose the next one with each press, via the last available one you jump back to the beginning. One of those keyboards is the Emoji keyboard, by the way, with which you can tap the well-known symbols.
External keyboard and ‘strange’ symbols
If you connect an external keyboard, you can switch between the different keyboard languages ​​using the key combination Control-Space. Important to remember, because if you suddenly can’t type certain Dutch letters (accents and the like), then most likely the wrong language has been chosen!
Speaking of accents in combination with a physical (bluetooth or not) keyboard: the input method is then the same as that used on the Mac. For example, to tap an é, tap Option-e and then e. To make an ó Option-e and then o. The umlaut is made by Option-u and then the desired vowel, resulting in, for example, ö. Something like an â is realized with Option-i and then the a. The ç is made with Option-c, the € with Option-2 and so on.
With some external keyboards, it takes a while to find certain characters, or finger gymnastics is necessary to get something done. If that is too distracting in some cases, just type the word without an accent; you can then quickly (more) select the correct spelling via autocorrect.
Also practical: The Option key in combination with other letters and characters on your physical keyboard produces a variety of commonly used ‘strange’ characters. Such as, for example, the examples shown below.
Be careful with alternative keyboard apps
Finally, a word of warning: there are many apps in the App Store that offer virtual on-screen keyboards. Very nice, such a thematic and whether or not cartoonish keyboard. But there is a security risk: these kinds of apps can – logically – read along with everything you type.
We wouldn’t take the chance, because there is a chance that a rogue developer will pass on privacy-sensitive data such as passwords and other things to themselves. The more serious apps that offer alternative keyboards are often reliable, especially if there are big names behind them.
But even then: if you like to keep your things safe, use the standard on-screen keyboard, which in its equally standard form (of course) has everything you need to offer!
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