Secret keyboard shortcuts: Speed up your typing!

Apple popularized virtual, multitouch keyboards with the original iPhone. Since then, the company has improved text entry with editing and insertion options, and the keyboard itself — with a new, predictive engine, optional custom keyboards, shortcuts on iPad, and even a trackpad mode!
Not every option is available in every app or for every device, and not all of them are obvious at first, but once you learn them, you'll be keyboarding like a champ!
Set settings
There are a lot of settings you can toggle for the keyboard, including auto-caps, auto-corrections, spell-check, caps lock, predictions, and more.
- Launch Settings.
- Tap on General.
- Tap on Keyboard.
- Toggle to your liking!
Trackpad Mode
If you have an iPhone 6s or iPhone 7, you can use 3D Touch to transform the keyboard into a trackpad. That makes it easier than ever to move the editing cursor and select text.
- Touch and hold on the Space key. (Or use 3D Touch, if available, on any iPhone that supports it.)
On a 3D Touch iPhone, you can press firmly again to switch between moving and selecting.
Hide QuickType
If you don't want to turn predictions off all the time, but you do want them off some of the time, you can!
- Touch the bar on top of the predictions.
- Pull it down to hide it.
When you want your predictions back, just pull them back up!
Speedy switches
If you only want to enter one number or symbol, don't tap Number or Symbol button — there's a faster way!
- Touch the number or symbol button and keep your finger on it.
- Slide your finger up to the number or symbol you want to enter.
- Let go!
Once you're done, the keyboard will instantly switch back to text more. The same works for shift when you want to enter uppercase letters!
CAPS LOCK
When you want to SHOUT AT SOMEONE WHO IS WRONG ON THE INTERNET you don't need to hit the Shift button for each letter.
- Tap the shift quick twice in a row.
- Type your TEXT.
- Tap shift again to go back to lower case.
YOU'RE WELCOME.
Special characters
Typing the letter 'e' is easy as tapping it. Typing 'èéêëēėę' is almost as easy.
- Touch and hold down on the letter to get a popup with alternate characters.
- Slide over to the alternate character you want enter.
- Let go.
How to type special characters and symbols on your iPhone or iPad
Shake to undo (iPhone only)
If you type some text, delete some text, or even paste some text and later regret, you can undo it.
- Shake your iPhone.
- Tap Undo (or Redo).
SRSLY.
Magnify mistkes
If you type a bunch of text and then notice a mistake, you can edit it.
- Touch the screen and hold down until the magnifying loupe appears.
- Drag until the cursor is at the mistake.
- Let go and make your corrections.
Cut, copy, and paste
If you want to do more serious text editing, you can — with cut, copy, and paste!
- Double tap on the text you want to select.
- Drag the handles to adjust the text selection.
- Tap Cut or Copy.
To paste text, use the magnification loupe to position the cursor, then tap Paste.
Quick contractions
Instead of typing we-number-button-apostrophe-ll for we'll, just type "well"l and auto-correct will switch it to "we'll". Weree for we're, helll for he'll and other common contractions work the same.
Undo auto-correct
Auto-correct will attempt to fix typing mistakes as you make them. If the correction is wrong, however, just hit the backspace key and iOS will popup what you originally typed. Tap on it, and it'll be un-auto-corrected and restored.
Rapid replacements
Misspelled words will be underlined in red. Tap them and iOS will offer a suggested replacement. You can get suggested replacements for any word, however, at any time. Just tap the word, then tap Replace from the popup.
Fast formatting
You can quickly apply bold, italics, or underline in any app that supports rich text formatting.
- Double tap to select the text you want to format.
- Use the handles to adjust the selection, if needed.
- Tap the B/U option in the popup menu.
- Choose the formatting you want to apply.
Dictionary defined
If you're not sure whether you're using the right word — cite the site in sight? — you can pull up a dictionary and check.
- Double tap to select the word you want to look up.
- Use the handles to adjust the selection, if needed.
- Tap Look Up to get the dictionary definition. Tap Manage to change or add dictionaries.
How to add and remove dictionaries on your iPhone and iPad
Attachment insertion
If your typing an email and decide you want to attach an image or document, you can do that too!
- Double tap where you want to insert the image or attachment.
- Tap Insert Photo or Attachment from the popup menu.
- Choose the photo or attachment you want to insert.
Super shortcuts
If you tap the spacebar twice while typing, iOS will automatically insert a '.' for you and capitalizes the next letter. You can set up your own shortcuts as well. It's great for handling common misspellings or inserting anything your type frequently, like 'gml' for your gmail address.
- Launch Settings.
- Tap on General
- Tap on Keyboard.
- Tap on Shortcuts.
How to setup and use text shortcuts on iPhone and iPad
Enter emoji
Emoji are a special character set used to communicate pictographically. The emoji keyboard should be enabled by default, but if not:
- Launch Settings.
- Tap on General.
- Tap on Keyboards.
- Tap on Add New Keyboard.
- Tap on Emoji.
You can access it by tapping the smily face or globe button to the left of the spacebar and mic button, then burrito thumbsup sushi cake canadaflag tada to your heart's content!
Keyboard apps
If you don't like the built-in QuickType keyboard, you can get others like SwiftKey from the App Store.
- Launch App Store.
- Find the keyboard you want and download it.
- Launch Settings.
- Tap on General.
- Tap on Keyboards.
- Tap on New Keyboard.
- Choose the keyboard you downloaded.
How to setup and use custom keyboards on iPhone and iPad
Swift switching
Once you've got a few keyboards installed, paging between them becomes arduous. Instead:
- Touch and hold the Globe/Smily button until the keyboard selector pops up.
- Slide up to the keyboard you want to switch to.
- Let go.
Dictation!
As improved as the iPhone keyboard is, sometimes it's still easier to talk than type. Thanks to Siri's new streaming speech-recognition, dictation is better and faster than ever.
- Tap the mic button
- Start talking.
You can even say punctuation, line and paragraph breaks. Or say "all caps" and dictate by the letter.
Plus power
If you have an iPhone 6 Plus, you can rotate to landscape mode and get access to an extended keyboard that includes editing, formatting, and even arrow keys. It's a lot of keyboard to love, but it can help you power through documents.
Bluetooth bonus
The iPhone supports Bluetooth keyboard just like the iPad. That includes everything from keyboard cases to a full-sized externals, and everything in between. If you want to get physical, you can do it with Bluetooth.
Your shortcuts?
Those are some of my favorite keyboard and text-entry shortcuts. They save me a ton of time when I'm typing. I'm always on the lookout for more, however, so if you have any I missed, add them to the comments! Either way, let me know your top tips!
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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.
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Loved the nod to Full Metal Jacket. :-)
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I never knew about #9! How about making corrections with dictation. Nothing like Siri really screwing a sentence up while driving. Sent from the iMore App
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It'll underline words it's not sure about and you can tap to replace those as well. Sent from the iMore App
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Create a shortcut with your email address, you'll save a TON of time.
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Been using that one for a while. My wife hit me when I told her bc I didn't tell her sooner. Sent from the iMore App
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I use @@ as my shortcut, because the @ symbol often appears on keyboards in text fields that require an e-mail address.
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Shortcuts are great. I also like the shake to undo feature also.
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The iPhone 6 (not just the plus) has the extended keyboard. Crazy annoying on the 6 though as it is too easy to hit the amazingly useless "please erase everything I just typed" button. Sent from the iMore App
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I use shortcuts such as m@g to expand to my@gmail.com account.
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Me too. One should note, however, that the expansion function often doesn't work for usernames in many sign in fields and seemingly never for passwords; pro tip: this is what Autofill pulling from iCloud Keychain is for!
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Very helpful list of things to know Rene. Also thanks to everyone who posted additional shortcuts.
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Thanks and indeed!
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WHY ARE YOU SO WRONG RENE Sent from the iMore App
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Didn't know you could shake to undo. Thanks.
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You can also hold the "123" button, and tap multiple keys, then release the "123" button to go back to qwerty. Sent from the iMore App
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Thanks for the tips!
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Great article, I knew but keep forgetting 3, 9 and 10 but often employ the others. If only I knew how to get the shortcut syncing function to work. For other reasons I recently upgraded a 4s with 6, an ipad3 and iPad mini with an Air2, and a mba '11 with a Mac mini '12. Thought that this would solve the sync problem. However it doesn't matter if I delete shortcuts from one device, or all at the same time, eventually the deleted shortcuts will repopulate in all devices. So frustrating. Any suggestions anyone?
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Try this: http://www.imore.com/ios-help-keyboard-shortcuts-not-syncing-ios-8
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Which is the app in #11? Doesn't ring a bell.
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Drafts, a great text editor that I basically use to time-shift typing.
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thanks for the tips! they will come in handy!
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When typing a URL, hold "." And you'll be presented with ".com , .net , etc" Sent from the iMore App
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This default selected one is also based on the region your keyboard is set to. If you have a Spanish keyboard set, it will have .es selected as default, if you're using the UK British Keyboard, .co.uk
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One of my iPhone 5S has a green predictive button in settings and the other one doesn't. Both are running iOS 8.1.3. Does anyone know where it is?
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I use TONS of shortcuts. Family names -
ma expands to Maya. And mas expands to Maya's.
Contractions - sl = she'll, wv = we've, ur = your and ure = you're
And since iOS hates the words well and were - always making them contractions, I set up shortcuts for the contractions wl and wr respectively, and make the actual word a shortcut for the actual words so iOS doesn't change were to we're.
My favorite shortcut is: SFAC- stupid fucking autocorrect. Thanks for the article! Didn't know about the slide from shift/alternate characters trick. Very useful! -
For ONE-HAND users of iPhone 6: make a resized keyboard, like the 5's size, but ADD a cut, copy- and paste button to the side! I DISLIKE the size of the current keyboard on iPhone 6! I dislike to stretch the thumb from side to side when reaching for the outer keys! But resized keyboard, like the iPhone's, would be great!
We can 3D Touch on the keyboard to mark text BUT we have to lift the thumb in order to either cut or copy the text! That's where I'd like the copy, cut- and paste button IN the keyboard! For iOS 10: PLEASE! Sent from the iMore App -
Here's one I found: 3D Touch to enter into "move cursor mode", put your cursor on a word, keep holding pressure down, now press down and you'll select the current word, double press down and you'll select the hole sentence... It's really like double-clicking and triple-clicking in Windows.
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Nice
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Hello everyone, I have had my iPhone 6s Plus for over a week now, but I can't seem to figure out how to save words to the iPhones keyboard dictionary! It was the same process for Windows Phone and Android. I'm still a noob, because this is my first iOS device, any help is greatly appreciated!! Sent from the iMore App
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One thing lots of people don't know about #21 is that you can do the same thing on an iPad by holding two fingers on the keyboard and moving them around. Same results.
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nice... Posted via the iMore App for Android
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I just want dark (black) style to my keyboard. Sent from the iMore App
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Do you need to set something up for the contractions thing to work? It doesn't work on my iPad.