Tip o’ the Week: Keyboard Shortcuts
It took a little while for me to get used to the iPhone’s “soft” keyboard — large hands + tiny keyboard = baby elephant playing piano. Even though I’ve become rather proficient with the iPhone’s keyboard, I’m always on the prowl for anything that will help with my speed and accuracy. This week’s Tip is all about some keyboard shortcuts, brought to you by and with special thanks to George by way of Adam Pash’s article at lifehacker.com. Keep reading for some helpful keyboard Tips (and check out Adam’s article for yourself)!
Unless you are building aircraft, skyscrapers or bridges, shortcuts/cutting corners are a GOOD thing. Take typing on the iPhone, for instance. There are a number of time-saving (and finger-tapping) ways to maximize your iPhone’s keyboard.
When entering a web address, and you need something other than a .com (.com key already provided on your iPhone), then just tap and hold on the .com key and three other common domain options will appear. Just tap the one you need and you are on your way.
Similarly, if you are entering an email address, you’ll notice that you don’t even get the .com key on your keyboard. I believe this is a serious (VERY serious) oversight on Apple’s part, but at least they provided a solution by enabling a pop-up list of domain options when you hold down the period ( . ) key. If you get in the habit of using this shortcut, it’s just a matter of time before you are, well, saving time!
For those sending out Spanish language texts, emails, etc., did you know that if you hold down the ” ? ” key or the ” ! ” key, you can invert those characters? Give it a try!
Finally, what if you need to accent a letter? The name “Chloe”, for example, may need an “acute” accent above the “e”, like this: “é”. To do this, just hold down the “e” key and a pop-up will give you several options to choose from, as illustrated above.
Try experimenting on your own with the iPhone keyboard and see what kind of surprises may be waiting for you. This experiment can be particularly handy and satisfying while waiting in the long line at the DMV.
That’s it for this week’s Tip. If you have a tip of your own that you would like to share with the rest of us, please leave a Comment or you can email me at: brian.hart@tipb.com.
Disclaimer: Tip o’ the Week makes no guarantee, express or implied, that any tip found herein will be new or particularly useful to the reader (but it could be fun adding accents to everyone’s name that you know. Kinda weird… but fun).
I will try it out "
July 23rd, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Holding down . for .com is serious Kung Fu! Thanks Brian!
July 23rd, 2008 at 5:48 pm
as a univerity student, holding down for .edu is sweet!
July 23rd, 2008 at 8:00 pm
yeah, right!
July 23rd, 2008 at 8:18 pm
Very cool, I didn’t know that you could hold down the . button
But I was very relieved, when I found out that you can do the german “Umlaute” (ä, ö, ü), also by holding down the respective button 
July 23rd, 2008 at 8:35 pm
Great find! Thanks. Used it just now!
July 23rd, 2008 at 10:28 pm
what about doing all caps?
July 23rd, 2008 at 11:00 pm
hold down the arrow key while typing your word.
July 23rd, 2008 at 11:42 pm
for all caps, double tap shift key and it will turn blue indicating all caps
July 24th, 2008 at 12:33 am
To get all caps to work, one has to turn on “Enable Caps Lock” in Settings/General/Keyboard, which is “off” by default.
July 24th, 2008 at 2:06 am
got it! i forgot about enabling that feature.
July 24th, 2008 at 9:41 am
i have a nice Tip that saved a lot of time for me: If you are typing on the qwertz (or qwerty by the way, i´m german) keyboard and need numbers or extra keys like “-/:;()” etc., tap and hold the [.?123] Key on the lower left of the keyboard and wipe with your finger to the key you need. After releasing your finger, the keyboard switches back to qwertz-mode.
July 25th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Some pretty good tips there, thanks!
July 26th, 2008 at 7:30 am
You can also hold down the currency button.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:44 pm
hmm.. thank you very much. usefull information
August 3rd, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Cool. It took almost a day to find this info. Thanks, great job.
August 3rd, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Super. It took almost a day to find this info. Thanks, great job.
September 6th, 2008 at 9:55 am
excellent material.
September 8th, 2008 at 11:14 am
WOW. these are such helpful tips! thanks so much brian! @André - your tip will save me time too!
Loved this post (and the comments) so much i posted a link on my twitter.
October 1st, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Can someone please tell me how to get the ascent key
under ~ the Tilde key, top left on a standard key board on an iPhone? You would think by holding down the Tilde ~ key on the iPhone thekey would appear.