hi this is gary with macmost.com let's
take a look at the features of your
iphone's virtual keyboard
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so whenever you're typing on your iphone
whether it's in notes mail a form and
safari or perhaps writing in pages
you're going to be using a virtual
keyboard at the bottom of the screen
there's a lot that you can do with this
virtual keyboard besides just typing the
standard characters let's take a look at
all the different features so you can
get the most out of it first when you're
typing you will of course tap each key
to enter a letter but what happens if
the exact letter you want isn't on the
keyboard say you want a letter with an
accent mark well in most cases you can
get it by simply tapping and holding a
letter and you're going to get
variations for that character
for instance accent marks and other
things then you could just keep holding
and move your finger over the one that
you want release and now you've got that
variation right there this also works
for some symbols for instance if i go to
the numbers and symbols keyboard here i
can tap and hold some keys to see
variations like that or like that or
like that
and when you go to another keyboard like
the numbers and symbols keys there you
would usually do that single tap here
then select the character that you want
and then tap here again to go back to
the letters but you can do that all in
one motion just tap and hold
drag your finger to the character you
want release
and it types the character and the
keyboard returns to the previous mode
now sometimes you have slight variations
on keyboards and different apps and
you'll be able to actually do even more
with some keys in this case if i'm
typing a url in safari
there's a period here that appears next
to space because period is something
you're going to need when typing a url
but not only is there a period here but
you don't even have to type out
something like dot com you could tap and
hold the period and then you'll get
suggestions like dot
com.net.edu and so on just release over
the one you want and it types out all
those characters so you can get dot com
with one tap and release rather than
having to type four different characters
now notice when you're typing at the
beginning of a sentence it automatically
has the shift key down so that anything
that you type
will be capitalized because it's the
beginning of a sentence
well if you want to capitalize something
else you would have to tap the shift key
and then tap the letter
and then it will type that letter
capitalized and then the shift key is
released but if you want to type in all
caps for a little while you can double
tap the shift key and now you can see
it's locked down so i can type something
in all caps and then tap the shift key
to release it now when you're at the end
of a sentence you may want to put a
period there that would mean tapping
here
then tapping the period then space
now you can notice how it returned you
to the regular keyboard which is handy
but there's an even quicker way to do
that
instead at the end of a sentence just
tap space twice
and it will know that you mean period
space not two spaces now take a look at
the little smiley face button at the
bottom left hand corner of the screen
there's actually two different things
that could appear there either that face
or a globe which one depends on how many
keyboards you have added in this case i
just have one keyboard the us english
keyboard and the emoji keyboard of
course now if you tap that it switches
to the emoji keyboard and i can tap
there again it now says abc to go back
to the regular keyboard but if i tap and
hold i will get a list here i can go to
keyboard settings
or i can choose one of the two keyboards
here there's also some other things
which we'll look at in a minute
now if i go to keyboard settings here
this is a quick way for me to get to
settings general keyboards i don't have
to go out of the app and into the
settings app i can just jump right here
you're going to notice a lot of switches
here and these switches control some of
the things i've already talked about and
some things i'm going to be talking
about shortly so for instance if you
find that tapping space twice doesn't
give you period and a space
it may be because you've got it switched
off here
other things like auto capitalization of
the first word that's here auto
correction is here and there are a ton
more now if you go to keyboards here and
you add another keyboard
you're gonna get a list here that'll
show third-party keyboards something
i'll talk about later but also
different languages here
so we can go in and select another
keyboard
let's select japanese
and now i have three keyboards here so
now notice that i have the globe here at
the bottom rather than the little happy
face but the face is now here it's now a
key taking up half the space that was
used by the one two three key there i
can tap this to switch the emoji viewer
and then there's abc to switch back
now if i want to switch keyboards
because i've got us and japanese i can
tap here and i'll switch between them
and notice the bottom
briefly indicates which keyboard you're
at and then that goes away so this will
just switch between all the different
keyboards i've got i can still tap and
hold and i can get back to keyboard
settings or switch to one of these three
keyboards if i have a lot of keyboards
like 7 or 10 this might be a quicker way
to get to the one that i want i'll go
back into keyboard settings here i can
go into keyboards and let me get rid of
this keyboard for now now you can see
i'm back with just the face here at the
bottom left now the other thing you can
do here if you tap and hold is you can
switch to one of these one-handed
keyboards you've got the left side or
right side so switch to this and it
pushes the entire keyboard to one side
making it easier to hold the iphone with
one hand and type with your thumb to get
rid of it you can tap here and then go
to the other side or the regular
keyboard or you can just tap this button
right here
to expand the keyboard to the regular
mode notice at the top of the keyboard
you've got predictive text here so as
you start typing something
it's going to try to predict what it is
you're typing and instead of having to
type all the letters of the word you can
skip it and just tap the word there it
types it for you even puts a space
afterwards the space will actually go
away if you decide that's the end of a
sentence so i can put an exclamation
point here and see how it replaces the
space with that it's smart enough to
know i don't want space and then
punctuation now notice another thing in
the predictions here the first one is in
quotes and it's always exactly what you
typed
so here if i were to type space it may
autocorrect this to something i don't
want if i want it to be exactly what
i've typed so far i can tap here and it
will use just that another interesting
feature of the keyboard is if you tap a
letter and hold it notice that the
letter appears above this is because
your finger is covering the key and this
way you can see the letter to confirm
it's the one that you want but if you
rather have that off you can go into
keyboard settings and it's right here
called character preview now if you want
to type an emoji you tap here and you
can scroll through all the different
emoji you can tap at the bottom to jump
to different categories but most of the
time you're just going to want to search
so you just tap here and then you type
what you want to search for now note
you're going to get different results
for different words so don't assume just
because if you type something like smile
and you don't find what it is you're
looking for that you're not going to
find it if you try a different but
similar word like that the search terms
are taken from the definitions of those
emoji characters and sometimes those
definitions don't have all the different
keywords you would expect in a search
also note that predictive text will help
you with emoji if you type something
like that you're going to see emojis
sometimes appear right there and you can
just tap it to select that emoji instead
of using a word one way to quickly type
large pieces of text that you use all
the time is to go into keyboard settings
and go to text replacement and here you
can add something that uses a shortcut
so some short little set of characters
you wouldn't normally type
and then it replaces it with a phrase
and it could be a very long phrase so
here for example i've set up the two
characters e7 something i normally
wouldn't type to automatically be
replaced with a longer email address and
now i just type e
7
and then you can see it actually comes
up as one of the suggestions up here i
can tap that or just space and it will
replace it with that and you can make
these really long they could be a
sentence several sentences several
paragraphs so you can use them say in an
email message if you're always
responding to people with the same few
paragraphs of help text you can make
that something in predictive text type a
few characters and then it will replace
those few characters with that entire
long passage now one problem a lot of
people have when editing text is trying
to be able to tap in just the right
space
to put the cursor exactly where they
want it can be difficult but you can
actually use the keyboard down here as a
trackpad if you tap and hold the
spacebar and wait you'll see that all
the letters on the keys go away and now
you can drag your finger around
on the keyboard and the cursor will move
like you're using a trackpad on a mac so
you can position
the cursor exactly where you want
release and we'll place it there
probably the best way to speed up typing
on the virtual keyboard is to use swipe
to type this is also called swipe typing
or a quick path the idea is that instead
of tapping out each letter you tap the
first letter and hold and then move your
finger over to the other letters of that
word your iphone will take the path
you're using to move your finger and try
to predict what word it is that you've
typed it won't always get it perfectly
right but you don't have to actually go
exactly to every letter for it to figure
things out so let's try it here i'll tap
on t move to h move to e
and release and you can see it got that
word right now i can try some other
words
and you can usually go a lot faster than
this
and you can see when it gets it wrong in
this case it capitalized fox for some
reason you can usually find the correct
one right here
you can also instead of selecting this
one just hit the delete key and it will
delete the entire last word so you can
try again
with little practice you can move pretty
quickly and figure out that you don't
really need to be that precise when
doing it to get good results of course
an even faster way to type is not to
type at all but use dictation which is
this little microphone here
this works great if you're in a quiet
place but of course if there are other
people around or a lot of noise then
you're going to have to just use the
keyboard
the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy
dog period
tap that keyboard there and it will
dismiss dictation and go right back into
regular mode another thing to know about
keyboards is that apps can have their
own we already saw that a little bit
with safari but here you can see numbers
has very different looking keyboards
matter of fact the keyboard will change
based on the format of the cell here's a
number formatted cell and we've got this
keyboard but i could switch to the
regular typing keyboard to enter text
there's a keyboard for calendar dates
there's a keyboard for durations there's
even a special keyboard for entering
formulas here with math symbols at the
top quick access to formulas and
functions in that button there now if
you're ever typing and you want to
dismiss the keyboard maybe because
you're actually reading a note you're
not actually adding anything new to it
the way to dismiss the keyboard is to do
a quick little swipe down in the middle
of the screen not over the keyboard at
all so quick swipe like that and you can
see the keyboard is dismissed just tap
anywhere in the text
and a cursor will appear again and the
keyboard will come up now another thing
i should mention about keyboards is if
you want a larger keyboard of course
turn your iphone horizontally this of
course won't work in all apps the app
has to support horizontal mode but
something like note does and you may
find it easier to type on a larger
keyboard like this in some apps like
messages you may actually get additional
features for instance messages has a
special key here at the bottom right you
tap that and now you can actually hand
write text and send that as a message
but that key only appears if you put
your keyboard in horizontal mode now i
mentioned third party keywords before
you get those in the mac app store they
actually come as apps and the apps add
those third-party keyboards so search
for keyboards in the app store
and then scroll through and see what
comes up some of these are really useful
for major companies like there's one
from google there's one from microsoft
others are just more of a design choice
they're basically the same keyboard but
you can use different colors or
background images behind them some have
really special features like grammar
tools and all sorts of different things
being able to find different animated
gifs to put into messages there are lots
of different third-party keyboards you
don't really need to have a third-party
keyboard for anything but you may find
one of these useful for what you do and
then when you add an app that includes a
third-party keyboard you would go in
here
and you would see them listed here as
third-party keyboards and you could just
add them to the currently active
keyboards so they don't appear by
default you have to go into settings and
add them i hope you found this useful
thanks for watching
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