How to Learn and Enter Morse Code on IPhone
Thanks to the new Gboard keyboard feature, you can now chat using Morse code on iOS – just like Android users who have been running around since May. Don’t know Morse code? Google says it can teach you the language in as little as an hour if you look at the company’s new typing simulator.
To communicate in (and learn) Morse code, you first need to download the dedicated Google Gboard keyboard from the App Store or Google Play . (The Android version also allows users to connect external switches to the device, which may make communication easier for some people with disabilities.)
Once you’ve installed Gboard on Android (or if it’s already installed on your smartphone), open the Settings app for your device. Scroll down and tap System and then Languages and Input. Tap Virtual Keyboard, then Gboard, then Languages. Tap on English (United States) and then scroll through the list of keyboards until you find Morse code, all the way to the right. Click on this. When you see more keyboard options appear below it, scroll down a bit if you’d like to enable sounds when you hit the dot or dash.
The process is similar to iOS, but much less convoluted. Once you’ve learned the basics of enabling Gboard on your iPhone, open the app and tap on the Languages option. Click Add Language and then scroll down until you find Morse Code. Tap it to select it – you’ll get the dots and dashes sounds automatically, but you can turn them off in the app’s keyboard settings screen (at the bottom).
For any platform, Google has a good description of what some of the various settings you might not have known about, such as “character timeout” and “word timeout”, mean.
When you’re ready to start tapping on the Morse keyboard, head over to Google’s Morse Typing Trainer to start learning letters and words. The neat thing about Google’s learning tool is that it offers you fun little mnemonic devices that you can use to remember which combination of dots and dashes corresponds to each letter. For example, if you want to enter the letter “A”, think of “archery” and just touch the dash – the arrowhead and its shaft: