There’s a Faster Way to Print Anything on IPhone
If you’ve had an iPhone for a while, you probably think you have it all figured out by now. But like any technology, there are a lot of hidden hacks that you probably don’t know about. Take your iPhone’s keyboard, for example . You may know that you can press and hold the spacebar to turn your keyboard into a mini trackpad. You probably also know that you can press Spacebar twice to add a period at the end of a sentence. But there’s a much more subtle trick that can change the way you type on your iPhone.
Typing anything other than letters on an iPhone sucks
First, let’s start with the problem: accessing some minor characters on iOS is annoying. On many Android keyboards, the main keyboard contains the number row as well as common symbols such as the comma or period. That’s not the case on the iPhone: When using apps like iMessage, the main keyboard consists almost exclusively of letters, with the exception of the spacebar, delete, shift, and backspace keys. Of course, you don’t need the period key when you press the spacebar twice, but to access other minor characters you need to press the 123 key first.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing: there are plenty of keys hidden here, including a question mark, exclamation point, comma, and numbers. However, it’s a little frustrating. You press 123 , select your character, then press 123 again to return to entering letters. It’s not so bad when that character finishes a sentence: you can select a question mark and then press “Send” on your message, which automatically switches you back to the main keyboard anyway. But when you’re typing something, you constantly need to switch between these different menus in order to type correctly. If you want to add a comma to a sentence, press 123 , press comma, press 123 again and continue. But there is a better way.
A faster way to enter minor characters on iPhone
Instead of pressing 123 and releasing it, hold it . By holding your finger on the 123 key, you have one of two options: With the same finger, you can swipe over the character you want to add, release, and you’ll add the character to the text field while it automatically switches back to the main keyboard. Or you can tap the secondary characters you want with your other finger and then release 123 , which will automatically switch back to the main keyboard again.
Once you get used to this trick, you’ll realize how much faster you can type longer messages without having to manually switch between keyboards. For example, to enter an amount of money, you can hold down 123 , press $ and then any numbers you want, release 123 and return to your emails to continue your message. While swiping is fun, I personally recommend holding 123 with one finger while typing minor characters with others: it’s more reliable for accessing additional characters that need to be pressed and held, such as accessing different currency symbols or different types of punctuation.