How to use the QuickType keyboard in iOS 8
iOS 8 brings with it a brand new way to type on your iPhone and iPad. QuickType is a new type of predictive keyboard that gets smarter as you use it. Not only that, since QuickType is contextually aware of your conversation, it can even present you with an answer to a question someone asked so you spend even less time typing out responses. And depending on who you're corresponding with, QuickType can even pick up on your conversation style. All you've got to do to train QuickType is start using it!
How to start using QuickType on your iPhone or iPad
- Launch any app and pull up the keyboard — we'll use the Messages app as an example.
- Simply start typing as you always have.
- You'll notice that QuickType instantly starts suggesting words that may come next.
- Tap on the word in the QuickType bar that you'd like to add to your message and keep typing or adding words as QuickType predicts them.
- If you type in a word that QuickType either doesn't recognize or suggests something else for, it will show your spelling in quotations on the far left. Tap on it to confirm that's what you meant and keep typing and selecting suggestions.
How to hide the QuickType keyboard on your iPhone or iPad
If you don't want to completely turn off QuickType but instead just want to hide it temporarily, you can do so in one swipe.
- Launch any app and pull up the keyboard.
- Swipe down on the keyboard over the QuickType bar.
- The QuickType bar should disappear but you should see a small grab bar above the keyboard still.
- To bring back up the QuickType bar, swipe up starting at the top of the actual keyboard below the grab bar.
How to turn off the QuickType keyboard on your iPhone or iPad
By default, the QuickType bar on your iPhone or iPad's keyboard will be turned on. If you don't want to just hide it and prefer disabling it altogether, you can do so on the fly, which makes it easy to re-enable quickly too.
- Launch any app and pull up the keyboard.
- Tap and hold on the emoji icon in the bottom left of the keyboard.
- Swipe upwards and hover your finger over the Predictive toggle and release your finger.
- To enable QuickType again, just follow the same three steps.
That's all there is to it! If you're using the QuickType bar in iOS 8, let us know what you think of it so far! Do you like it or is there still a lot of room for improvement? Sound off in the comments and let me know!
Help and how to editor for iMore. I can take apart an iPhone in less than 6 minutes. I also like coffee and Harry Potter more than anyone really should.
Reader comments
How to use the QuickType keyboard in iOS 8
It is annoyingly distracting and not helpful! I turned it off after sending only a few messages!!! Glad it was easy to turn off!!!
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Why? Its not as good as the stock keyboard? What does it do different than the Apple one?
Yep did the same here!
There is also in the Appstore Colorkeyboards, i mean you can use it system wide, like the Colorkeyboard in Cydia, im still on IOS 7 and im tempted to go but im Jailbroken!
Me too. I have to get that SwiftKey keyboard. I'll have to wait for December for a iOS 8 jailbreak.
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SwiftKey, what took you so long?
Sometimes when using quick type it also autocorrects, the center suggestion becomes highlighted and auto completes if I press space. Is there a way to override this without turning off predictions? With the old bubble style autocorrect there was a little x to override the correction. I have been searching and cannot find an answer.
They did mention this in the article...You should see the option to select exactly what you typed captured in quotes. You can now view this as the way to overide the autocorrect feature.
Thanks, somehow I completely missed that. Information overload I guess.
QuickType is a welcoming feature. Don't like it? Just turn it off. What's the fuss?...
Stating ones opinion!
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The moment I got iOS 8 I downloaded Swype, so I never gave Quicktype a chance. To be honest, it isn't just the whole swiping thing while sold me on swipe, it's also having a shift key which actually changes the case of the on screen characters. Apple's insanely illogical all caps keyboard never made any sense, and seemingly inverted shift key didn't help matters.
I wish Swype would push out an update or two though, as the current release is even buggier than iOS 8.
Thank you for this article. I saw the hide feature on my 5, but didn't realize I had it on the 6 plus. I had turned it off in settings altogether and just turned it back on now knowing I could just hide it when I don't want it. I love these how to's.
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I hated it on iOS 8 at first when I updated not sure if it got better on iOS 8.0.2 with my iPhone 5s. But it takes up a lot of space on a smaller screen, and half the time it would block me from even typing out anything half the time.
Seriously! It's much faster to type the word you want to write than just "wait" for the suggested word to appear. This is about "saving milliseconds"?
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I like it in principle, but in practice it's got some really annoying behaviors. One: it tends to suggest really odd words that I may have used once upon a time but are really uncommon, and almost certainly not the word I want to use right now. Also: it frequently rearranges the words in the Quicktype bar as you type. As an example: say I mean to type the word "the". I hit the "t", and just as I'm hitting the "h", I notice "the" in the rightmost position of the QT bar, so I reach for that... and while my finger is moving, QT moves "the" to the middle position, and I end up inserting some other word. Maddening beyond belief. A related bit of weirdness: Say that I'm about to type the word "the" (the behavior is not specific to this particular word) at the beginning of a sentence. I hit the period at the end of the preceding sentence, and as I'm about to hit the "t", I'll notice that "the" is one of the suggested words in the QT bar. By this time I'll have hit the "t", and begin reaching for the "the"... only to find that QT has removed it from the selections, and replaced all three positions with "'t'" on the left, and the first two words in its dictionary that start with T in the center and left, no matter how unlikely those words are to go here (in my case "t&c's" and "T&C's). This is... not useful. Also: the QT bar frequently suggests words that are just misspellings that I may have accidentally typed once or twice, which is really counterproductive.
I'd really like the ability to manually edit the dictionary it uses - the misspellings need to go, and given the choice between having to manually spell out "T&C's" (on the exceedingly rare occasions I need that expression) and having it permanently clogging up the QT bar, I'd much rather manually spell it out.
No doubt the feature will get better with time, and I still do find it useful now. But it's also pretty aggravating.