iPad Keyboard Tips: Type Faster and Make Mistakes Disappear

The iPad keyboard does far more than the keys you can see on screen. It can fix your spelling automatically, type a whole word from two letters, add accents, and even let you talk instead of type. Most of these features are switched on already, sitting quietly until you know they are there.

None of the settings below can break anything or cost you money. If you turn something on and decide you don't like it, you can switch it straight back. The keyboard on every modern iPad works the same way, whether it is a basic iPad, an iPad Air, or an iPad Pro.

Make the on-screen keyboard bigger and easier to read

When you tap any spot where you can type, the keyboard slides up from the bottom of the screen. The keys are larger than on a phone, but you can still make typing more comfortable. Hold the iPad in landscape (turned sideways, with the long edge along the bottom) and the keys spread wider, which gives bigger targets for your fingers.

If the letters look small, you can increase the text size for the whole iPad, and the keyboard follows along. Tap the grey Settings icon on your home screen, then tap Display & Brightness, then Text Size. Drag the slider to the right and watch the sample text grow. There is no wrong setting here, so move it until reading feels relaxed.

Let autocorrect and predictive text do the work

Autocorrect quietly fixes common typos as you go. If you type "teh" it changes to "the" by itself. When it makes a change you did not want, look just above the keyboard or under the word: tap the suggested original in quotes to undo the correction and keep what you typed.

Predictive text is the row of word suggestions sitting along the top of the keyboard. Start typing "appoint" and the bar offers "appointment". Tap the word and it drops in complete, which saves you the last several letters. Over a few days the suggestions learn the names and words you use most, so they get more useful, not less.

If the suggestion bar is missing, you can switch it on. Open Settings, tap General, then Keyboard, and make sure the switch next to Predictive is green. The same screen has the switch for Auto-Correction if you ever want to turn the fixing off entirely.

Type punctuation and capitals without hunting for them

A full stop appears in one move at the end of a sentence: tap the space bar twice and the iPad adds a period followed by a space, ready for your next sentence. This one habit speeds up typing more than almost anything else, and it feels natural after a day or two.

Capital letters come from the up-arrow key (the shift key) on the left. Tap it once and the next letter is a capital; the arrow goes dark again afterwards. Double-tap the same arrow and it locks on for capitals all the way, shown by a line under the arrow. Tap it once more to switch the lock off.

For numbers and symbols, tap the .?123 key in the bottom-left corner. The letters swap for a number pad and common symbols. To grab a single symbol and bounce straight back to letters, press and hold .?123, slide your finger to the symbol you want, and let go. The keyboard returns to letters on its own.

Use the keyboard as a trackpad to fix mistakes

Editing text on a touchscreen used to mean poking at the exact letter you wanted, which is fiddly. There is a calmer way. Press and hold the space bar for a second; the letters on the keys fade away and the whole keyboard becomes a smooth trackpad. Now slide your finger and the cursor (the blinking line that shows where text goes) glides exactly where you steer it.

This makes it easy to drop the cursor in the middle of a word to fix one wrong letter. When the cursor sits where you want it, lift your finger and the keys return. Then tap the delete key (the back-arrow with an x, top right) to remove the letter to the left, and type the right one.

To select a whole word for replacing or deleting, double-tap it. Two little handles appear at each end of the highlighted word. Drag a handle to stretch the selection across more words. A small menu pops up with Cut, Copy and Paste, so you can move text around without retyping it.

Add accents, emoji and your own shortcuts

Emoji (the small pictures and faces) live behind the smiley-face or globe key at the bottom of the keyboard. Tap it to switch to the emoji panel, scroll through the categories along the bottom, and tap any picture to add it. Tap the ABC key to return to letters. Many people send a thumbs-up or a heart far more often than they expected to.

Text replacement is a hidden time-saver. You can set a short code that expands into a long phrase. Open Settings, tap General, then Keyboard, then Text Replacement, then the plus sign at the top right. In Phrase type your full email address, in Shortcut type something like "eml", and tap Save. Now typing "eml" anywhere offers your whole address in one tap.

Talk instead of type with dictation

Dictation turns your voice into text, which is a relief for longer messages or when your hands are busy. Look for the small microphone icon, usually at the bottom right of the keyboard near the space bar. Tap it, wait for it to listen, and simply speak in a normal voice. The words appear as you talk.

Speak punctuation out loud where you need it: say "comma", "full stop" or "new line" and the iPad adds them. When you finish, tap the keyboard icon or the microphone again to stop. Read the result and fix any stray word with the trackpad trick above. Dictation is free and works in most apps where you can type.

If you never see the microphone, it may be switched off. Open Settings, tap General, then Keyboard, and turn on Enable Dictation. Tap Enable when it asks to confirm. After that the microphone appears whenever the keyboard does.

Connect a physical keyboard and fix common annoyances

For long emails or writing, a physical keyboard you can press makes a real difference, and the iPad supports them. The simplest option is a keyboard case that the iPad clips into, often costing roughly $40 to $130 for common brands. It doubles as a stand and protects the screen, and many connect automatically with no setup.

A separate wireless keyboard pairs over Bluetooth (a short-range wireless link). To connect one, open Settings, tap Bluetooth, make sure the switch is green, put the keyboard into pairing mode following its small instruction card, and tap its name when it appears in the list. Apple's own Magic Keyboard sits at the higher end, around $250 to $300, while many third-party keyboards do the same job for far less.

With a physical keyboard attached, the on-screen one disappears to give you more space. Handy combinations still work: hold the Command key and tap C to copy, V to paste, and Z to undo the last change. You can switch back to the touch keyboard any time by tapping a text box, or simply unclipping the case.

Fix the common keyboard annoyances

If the keyboard refuses to appear when you tap a text box, the most likely reason is that a physical keyboard is still connected by Bluetooth in the background. The iPad assumes you want to use that one and hides the on-screen keys. Open Settings, tap Bluetooth, and either turn the physical keyboard off or tap the small letter "i" beside its name and choose Disconnect. The touch keyboard returns straight away.

When autocorrect keeps changing a correct word, such as a surname or a place, you can teach the iPad to leave it alone. Type the word, and when autocorrect tries to change it, tap the original in quotes to keep it. Do this two or three times and the iPad learns the word and stops correcting it. For names you type often, add them through Text Replacement with no shortcut, which adds them to the dictionary permanently.

Should the whole keyboard ever behave oddly, freezing or missing key presses, close the app you are typing in and reopen it. Swipe up slowly from the bottom edge of the screen and hold for a second to see all open apps, then flick the troublesome one up and off the screen to close it. Reopening it starts the keyboard fresh, which clears almost every glitch without losing any of your saved work.