Daily Tip: How to right-justify text on iPhone, iPad

By Rene Ritchie
last updated

Trying to figure out how to right-justify text on iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad? Built-in apps don't have alignment options but there is a work around if you really want some text stuck to the right margin. We'll show you how, after the break.

If you really, truly want to have some text right-justified on iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, you need to first enable an international keyboard for a language that's written right to left.

  1. Launch Settings
  2. Tap General
  3. Tap Keyboard
  4. Tap International Keyboards
  5. Tap Add New Keyboard
  6. Select a Hebrew, Japanese, etc. (anything that writes right to left)

Now you're ready to right-justify in an iOS app like Notes, Mail, etc!

  1. Launch Notes (or any app where you can type text)
  2. Type a word
  3. Double tap the word to select it (like you would for copy and paste)
  4. Arrows will appear at the far right side of the popup menu
  5. Tap the arrows to toggle between left and right justify

That's it! You can now stick text to the left or right margin on a line-by-line basis!

If you have any other cool iOS text tricks, let us know in comments!

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Rene Ritchie
Rene Ritchie
Contributor

Rene Ritchie is one of the most respected Apple analysts in the business, reaching a combined audience of over 40 million readers a month. His YouTube channel, Vector, has over 90 thousand subscribers and 14 million views and his podcasts, including Debug, have been downloaded over 20 million times. He also regularly co-hosts MacBreak Weekly for the TWiT network and co-hosted CES Live! and Talk Mobile. Based in Montreal, Rene is a former director of product marketing, web developer, and graphic designer. He's authored several books and appeared on numerous television and radio segments to discuss Apple and the technology industry. When not working, he likes to cook, grapple, and spend time with his friends and family.

19 Comments
  • What a handy tip! Thanks so much for sharing this.
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  • That's cute, thanks
  • Good Tip. Gonna have to try it out.
  • Won't work with ten-buttons japanese.
  • good tips, but more forward to the iphone 5 and more in future.
  • huh?
  • Made no sense to me either...
  • Nice tip!
  • There are two Japanese keyboards and it didn't work with any of them on my 3GS. It does however work with Hebrew.
    Cool little tip; I've often wondered whether I could bold, bulletpoint or tab text in notes to make it stand out from body text better and this may be useful.
  • Finally, a tip you don't learn on the first day of owning your iPhone.
  • This is actually a really handy tip, had no idea I could do this, thanks TiPb!
  • It doesn't work with the Japanese keyboards because Japanese is NOT a right-to-left language.
    Hebrew or Arabic should work just fine, though.
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  • THere is a big fail for the spanish writters, and is that the iphone doesnt change the "´" in the words for "`" like many other cell phone do. Whats the problem with it? in spanish you use them very often and they are not part of the GSM alphabet. So when you use them is like you use special chacarters, and the sms characters fall from 160 to 70. first problem, you should pay for more sms, but the main problem is that this split your message in 2, 3 or 4 messages and sometimes looks not good in the other side, who receive it sometimes cant really understand the meaning of. Would be cool can have a sms psanihs dictonary, or that the apple team fix this
  • "6. Select a Hebrew, Japanese, etc. (anything that writes right to left)" Excuse me, I think you forgot Arabic there.
    Please, if you're able to edit your published topic, go ahead and put "Arabic" before "Hebrew" and "Japanese" or I promise you I'll kill you one day if God Wills.