Why The iPhone Keyboard Sucks 

That's exactly what I felt when I bought my first iPhone: it's inconvenient to constantly switch to type numbers, commas, and periods. I guess one day they'll introduce the number row and periods as a "revolution".

This is true. The worst is that as iPhone user you take this flaws for granted, as if this is the way things should be. Thanks for bringing into conciseness

2:33 “sometimes you have to fight with autocorrect” 😂

Disabling autocorrect is one of the very first things I do when I set up a new phone. I keep suggestions on, that’s more convenient for me whatever algorithms they use or however “smart“ it is.

I could be wrong, but as I recall, the keyboard used to learn from the individual user on how they typed, what they tended to misspell, slang, etc. but at some point they switched to using a more cloud / community based learning system that based everything on the most common uses/issues for all users. Imo it’s definitely been worse ever since.

If I would get a dollar for every mistake I made with the Apple keyboard, I’d be a millionaire (from an Apple user)

spot on. This issue was relieved a bit with the use of swiftkey... but since apple now limited the use of 3rd party keyboards, the experience is truly frustrating. I do miss the android keyboard.

i hate my iphone keyboard

Back in the day, the biggest flex an iPhone user had , was their keyboard. It took me a century to open a keyboard in Android while iPhone seemed to be buttery. This is one area apple stopped investing or innovating.

Espacially for me who usesmultiple languages on iPhone, it is VERY frustrating as I tap the globe icon too many time when I am meant to tap the icon that takes me to the grammar symbols. When I come back, I don't have my original language, so I have to toggle back to what I was originally typing

This is something I noticed myself very consciously in the last couple of years. I’m fine with the numbers and comma being behind the button, I prefer this. But the multiple language issue and especially the autocorrect issues do affect me. Sometime I get the strangest suggestions too, accented words that I’ve never seen before and that don’t appear in either language I have active. The other big issue is the dictation symbol. I don’t use this. I don’t want to keep accidentally hitting that button, let me remove it.

Greg, you have hit the nail on the head. I hate those problems you mention and I will NEVER get another iPhone again. Another irritating feature is that if you go to contacts - search- the last three letters of the previous search are still sitting there and you need to clear the field by hitting the cross in order to start new searech. Dont these people test drive their over marketted super expensive toys? I hope Apple looks at this.

Great video. I always wondered why I struggled typing on my phone. One of the most annoying issues I had with the keyboard is autocorrect always changing the word “well” to “we’ll” no matter what the context is in this sentence. Always have to erase the apostrophe myself

As a iPhone user, this is true for sure!(thanks for the likes I’ve never had this much)

Amazing video. Put into words so many of the irritations I had and never realised why. The inclusion of a period in the Safari keyboard is so pointless. Who is typing out full addresses these days not searching for them. Also very true about the predicative text constantly changing things I just corrected.

My iPhone almost refuses to type the word “like,” instead autocorrecting to “Lille.” I can’t remember having a reason to talk about a city in northern France, certainly not as often as I use the word “like.”

For someone who has an Android phone and an iPad, autocorrect is frustrating. I often need to fight against it. Gboard just learns new words I use very often and highlights things it thinks it's wrong.

Very very true. Switched to iphone from android a few years ago and really like it EXCEPT typing on it. So much harder... especially if you are trying to go back and edit one word you messed up or something, it's so hard to select a certain part of the text

iPhone 14PM and Galaxy S23Ultra user/owner here. Great assessment. That's why I typically will reach for my S23Ultra way more often. Up until few days ago, I didn't know how to locate the degree symbol on iPhone 😂

Miss using 3D Touch with keyboard

I had a blackberry for about 2 years between 2011 and 2013 and within hours of getting it, I could type perfectly with minimal mistakes. I've had many different iphones now for ten years and still can't type without errors!

I came from Android and yes it sucks so much!!! You dind´t mention this problem: When I want to correct one letter of a word in a text, you can´t position the cursor right there where you tapped with the finger, no, instead the cursor always moves to the back or the front of the word and you need to manually move the corsor with the space bar by long pressing it and drag it where you want. This method is so slow and frustrating that sometimes I want to smash my phone to the wall!!

one of the most notorious issues Ive personally faced as dual language keyboard user is that it makes the button imaginary boundary larger for its word prediction system and this constantly results in grammar mistakes no matter which language keyboard I use

A period button isn’t needed because double tapping the space bar. Tap and hold 123 you can swipe to a comma and lift the finger to put one in.

Google keyboard from App Store, although may look almost the same, is waaay better. You can customize it, predicts words much better and with the right settings of correcting you don't have to fight it at all. It also brings the comma beside the space key and offers numbers when holding the uppermost row of keys. Also allows for swipe function, which I tend to use just once in a while, but then the typing can be super fast. Surely worth trying. The only downside is Apple disables third-party keyboards in some parts of the system, then it's a nightmare to type something on Apple's keyboard after being used to Google's.

2:20 happens all the time, super frustrating. I’ve also always had predictive text turned off. I can manually input the word much quicker than it would be to see it, recognize it’s correct, then tap it

1:38 I encounter this garbage in search boxes on multiple operating systems. Quickly type a few characters and hit enter. The search tries to update as I type, but when I hit enter it uses whatever it found when it last searched, which might not have included everything I typed. So I have to type what I want, then wait a second to be sure the search results actually have been updated with that. The fix is so simple, just do a search on everything I typed, then process the enter.

the predicting words is very slow too. i use Swiftkeyboard on my Galaxy A53, while typing words come up in less than a sec. i finish my sentence in no time without mistakes.

On samsung keyboards you can also have alternate characters (from the "numbers" section) for letter keys which makes typing even more fast. Also using the whole keyboard as a trackpad is pretty useful. Out of all the things I don't like about iphones, their keyboard is nearly at the top

What frustrates me daily is placing the cursor when text is highlighted. Like in Safari, I tap on the URL bar, the entire address gets highlighted, I have to drag one of the handles to the side, tap the unhighlighted text to place the cursor and the go from there. Also, I just wanna be able to scroll the address itself, instead of having to rely on picking up the cursor and hold it at the edge of the screen to get to the end of the address field.

I actually don’t mind the period being tucked away, because you can just double tap the spacebar to add one.

I agree. I genuinely thought something must have changed, it used to know what I was trying to say, not anymore. It also changes well to we’ll, & of to O’F, it is honestly bizarre that they would change it to an inferior result.

Often the keyboard on the iPhone, as well as the iPad (what I use most to write), is a catastrophe. When using dictation mode, most of the time it writes different things from what I say. Then another annoying problem I notice, the cursor that in most cases never stays where I put it, but jumps either to the beginning or end of the sentence.

You can use commas or other symbols faster by dragging from the numbers button onto the symbol you need. When you release it will automatically go back to the regular keyboard.

Thank you! I remember how on iOS 11 the predictive text function actually worked as it should and remembered your spelling patterns. Now it just suggests words out of left field and it’s suggestions are that are completely inappropriate.

I hope the whole autocorrect and predictive text stuff will actually get better with iOS 17. I will give it another shot as soon as the update is out but currently I just have autocorrect completely disabled because it's so bad

When I added a new keyboard language, I hated the change where the numbers & symbols button was split in half. Most of the time, I found myself tapping the emoji key instead. I've since gotten used to this, but just wish Apple could have simply put the globe icon next to the emoji icon where it originally was, instead of completely moving the emoji icon to make extra room that they already had plenty of.

I’m glad this guy called out Apple’s flaw now. I kept wondering why I always got a period instead of a space when I was typing a sentence on Safari. 😤 😡 😠

This is so frustrating I recently bought an iPhone and typing has been a very bad experience. I can type twice as fast on my android with fewer mistakes. One good thing it has is the cursor movement with the space key which is impressively smooth.

I noticed that when I am texting with someone having an iPhone they tend to send more short messages in short succession and not a bit longer ones, but managed by commas. The layout might contribute to that and I definitely not like it.

As someone who used to be an Android user who now uses iPhones, it’s true that I tend to make more typing mistakes as an iPhone user than I ever did when I was using a Samsung Galaxy. The way autocorrect works now is definitely a downgrade to how it worked on the Android phones I used and to older model iPhones. It’s especially annoying when I’m commenting on videos about games I enjoy, for example Mega Man Battle Network, where the MC has an uncommon name, such as Lan Hikari. There is several times I’m trying to talk about something amusing Lan did in the games or in the NT Warrior anime, and my iPhone tries to correct Lan into Alan. The fighting with autocorrect is quite annoying.

I switched from ANDROID to IOS 5 months ago and the keyboard was a pain to use not just because the numbers are not available on top all the time but the letters are different from any other keyboard I ever used like Samsung keyboard or Gboard I know that you can download Gboard on IOS but it’s not polished which is way I switch to iPhone on the first place it’s because of that polish .

You can just press the space bar twice to insert a period. I do it all the time. But you can always download a third party keyboard (as long as it’s one you trust since they can see everything you type).

Also the fact that it doesn't have many other functions and features like vibration when you type, a cliboard to save copied text, and some extra symbols.

Yep, totally agreed with your assessment of the iphone keyboard. The no numbers row above the letters is definitely extremely frustrating. Why Apple doesn’t put the numbers on the keyboard is just plain stupid. There’s been many times I think about switching back to Android just because of the dumb keyboard on the IPhone. The Galaxy S23 keeps looking better and better everyday when viewing the Iphone 15 rumors. Apple seriously needs to catch up to Samsung in many ways !!!!!!!

This is why I use Microsoft SwiftKey on my iPhone. Works SO much better.

The biggest issue for me is the keyboard itself: every key is not well placed, that's why I use SwiftKey that has a ton of flexibility. Still I miss my old Lumia keyboard, it was majestic, also it had that little knob that is way better than any spacebar for moving and I've heard tons of people saying that the lumia keyboard was superior to every keyboard...

When I switched from Microsoft SwiftKey to Gboard I was impressed by how well the auto correction works, it learns how you type, but often I happened to voluntarily "mispell" a word, so I disabled it, but I still mostly rely on the word prediction that does suggest words basing even on the app you're using, or at least it seems like it does. Anyway why not just use 3rd party keyboards on iPhone?

On the other hand, the swipe to type is really good. One thing I found that helps for me when typing is to tilt the phone more towards me so that my fingers are coming down more straight on the buttons.

If I remember correctly, there used to be a feature on the keyboard where it learned from each user's typing habits, including common misspellings, slang, and so on. However, it seems that at some point they transitioned to a more cloud-based learning system that focused on the most common usage and issues across all users. Personally, I believe the keyboard's performance has declined since then.

I noticed autocorrect has been so bad since over a year, probably longer thank you for confirming my struggle

I don’t do much typing on my iPhone, but “Autocorrect” is often awkward in “Pages” as well (which I use a lot on an iMac).

I’ve noticed that things were worse but didn’t understand why. Thanks for this great video, and I hope Apple Pay’s attention to it.

I've been alternating between using Gboard & SwiftKey as my primary keyboard because they have way more flexibility with the layout & more

if you hold the number button to acces the other symbols, you can keep holding it, type the symbols you want, then release it and it automatically switches back to keyboard

The suggestive system was way better a couple of iOS’s ago… I’m glad to see u brought it up I thought that I had my settings messed up 💀

As someone who switched from android and got an iPhone last year, I was able to get used to basically everything, but the keyboard is definitely not great. It would be greatly improved if you could long press the top row of letters to get numbers, and long press other letters to get common symbols, like on android. They got this right on the iPad keyboard, not sure why they don't bring it to iPhone in some form. I tried adding Gboard to my iPhone, but many apps will still bring up the regular keyboard instead of Gboard, and that inconsistency is more annoying than just dealing with the iPhone keyboard.

The keyboard was one of my top 3 reasons I had to switch back to Android after trying an iPhone. I attempted to use Gboard, but it's functionality is much more limited on iOS due to how Apple works that kind of stuff. It's too bad, cause I did like a lot of the UI elements to iOS, but functionality wise, it just didn't work for me.

The funny thing is that I have the Dvorak version of their keyboard which allows more space for “.” and “,”. Yet they purposely chose not to put a button, leaving a blank space

I mostly miss having punctuation as long presses on the main keyboard. Quotes, parenthesis, etc were all available on swiftkey for Android by long pressing on the appropriate letter key. I use swiftkey for iOS now, which inexplicably is missing this feature and also has seriously subpar haptics. But I still use it because I can have my number row.

Even though the apple’s keyboard can be a bit annoying, for me personally being an apple user for a long time, I’ve actually gotten used to apple’s keyboard layout. When I try to use an android keyboard, I actually find myself having more of a hard time. Of course this is just me, me personally I like apple’s keyboard.

When the iPhone first came out, autocorrect was really good. Now it's trash.

I always thought the high number of periods I type where because I'm just bad at typing and only now I realised the safari keyboard is different..

First video where a flaw is exposed as a flaw instead of trying to sell as a feature. I like it!

I mostly use two other languages when typing and this constantly happens to me as well. I’m just surprised to see that there are so many issues with English as well, which is supposed to be the language with the most updates and the most accurate one

But can't you press the space button 2 times to make a period ?

funnily enough with the android tablet/ipad keyboard it is the exact opposite, gboard is literally the only options that has the English (PC) layout that shows as many symbols as the ipad one. The rest of the keyboards such as samsung keyboard, swiftkey, anysoft and florisboard just stretch the keys in the phone layout so large they're impossible to type on.😊

I had been wondering why “well” gets replaced by “we’ll” and “love” gets replaced by “live” every time I type one of those two words. It’s a relief to know that it isn’t a fault in my typing after all

I can say one thing: since Steve Jobs died, Apple died

i mean its kinda right, but for my personal experience, i can say that this was only a problem at the first months after switching. Now, after more than 2 years using an apple divice, i dont really feel that disadvantage. I would even say, that i'm way faster at writing than before. But the predective text thing really annoys me, especially if i'm not writing in my native language :/

I came here to see if anyone had the same complaints as me, but nothing described here is actually a problem.

We can simply disable the auto complete feature at the Settings app. I have been using this feature for years.

Before watching the video, I was expecting you to give reasons why Apple “had to make” the keyboard suck for some “higher purpose”. 😅

This video validates my frustration in such a bittersweet way, lol. I switched to an iPhone last year after using Android phones for over a decade, and I have to say that everything about the transition has been an improvement - with the *very* glaring exception of the keyboard typing experience. And what's even more frustrating that all of the third-party keyboards I've tried are highly limited/flawed compared to their Android counterparts. It seems like some very simple adjustments (or even just fewer restrictions on third-party keyboards) could vastly improve the UX, but sadly it doesn't seem to be on Apple's radar. All that being said, I really love the new implementation of Dictation mode in iOS 16, and find myself using it more & more. I just wish it worked so seamlessly in macOS (which, at least on my M1 Macbook Air running Ventura, is so error-prone as to be essentially useless).

OMG the period key in the search bar has been driving me nuts and I thought itnwas just me until now 😂

When I got my first iPhone in 2008 the typing was fantastic. It’s slowly degraded into a complete mess. I’m sure it’s from loading more and more code on top to try and fix issues rather than actually redesigning it to function properly.

So correct, i bought an iPhone 13 pro max a year ago . The lack of the numbers on the top was the number 1 reason why i went back to s22 ultra. Samsung spoiled me with this feature. The constant switching from number to text at setup and few days of using the iPhone was so painful. Great video.

Well I guess Apple saw the video lmao

Also, the swipe functionality is only available for select languages, while gboard and swiftkey have alot more languages (Danish f.i,)

I loved typing on my iPhone X, never made a typo back then. Since the iPhone 13 Pro typing became a mess. The lack of 3D Touch also made things worse - the long press space bar cursor is awful, I never use it.

I've been using Microsoft swift keyboard since 2019 and it's the best iOS keyboard ❤❤❤ Never going back to native iOS keyboard 😊

I use swipe keyboard to avoid frustration and it works well for me and faster to type :)

1:52 I almost never use the predictive text-for anything less than about 15 characters, I can type it faster than the prediction engine can figure it out and then me notice that it has figured it out and then tell my fingers to stop typing the word and instead hit the space bar. But last time I checked (which was like 3-4 major versions of iOS ago), if you turned predictive text off that also disabled autocorrect. Which, for all my complaints, is still better than no-autocorrect. But it’s been long enough I should check again. As for numbers and period/comma: the two spaces=period pretty much fixes that part, so if they were gonna add a couple more keys, it should be comma, question mark, slash, hyphen/en-dash/em-dash, and semicolon, in that priority order. But the thing that most often annoys _me_ on iPhone keyboard is that you can’t turn smart quotes on without also turning on smart dashes. It’s really, really easy to type an en dash or em dash, so smart dashes are unnecessary, and when they’re on I can’t type multiple hyphens, which is really frustrating. Though far _more_ frustrating on macOS and iPadOS, because of how I use them.

My biggest complaint is the caps lock once turned on, automatically turns itself off if you switch to numbers then back to letters.

As an iPhone user, I really like it despite the lack of a number row. Typing with commas and punctuation has become automatic, and the convenience of double tapping the space button for a full stop is great!

This is exactly what I felt when I switched from Andoid and thought something is wrong with me because everyone around says iPhone keyboard is so intuitive

Have been using IPhone for years now and didn’t really realise it. Probably got used to it because first pressing the 123 button to type the comma has become muscle memory.

I like Apple's kebyoard and autopredict feature as they change with context. Everytime I tried typing on a Samsung predictions would be wrong due to learned typos by the system. "Handy" misspelled to "Hanfy" becomes annoying after the second time the Samsung autocorrect fights you. The Button layout is just something I got used to and wouldn't change, although an option for new users could be helpful.

Honestly, I prefer the apple keyboard

Hehehe as a trilingual Pinoy, this is so true! That's why when Apple made it possible to use third-party keyboards on iOS in September 2014, I downloaded a few of them and settled on two of them since at least 2018: Gboard by Google for English (USA) and SwiftKey (independent at first then later acquired by Microsoft in February 2016) for Iloko (aka Ilokano) and Tagalog (aka "Filipino"). 👍👌🇵🇭🇺🇸

Also I feel like there used to be arrows < > instead of just the back arrow that simply makes you delete an entire word or half a sentence if you don't tap just right on the letter your trying to correct 🤷🏽‍♀️

2:24 Reminds Me of that Ryan Higa SpongeBob Parody 😂

Greg, you should also mention that for bilingual people the iPhone's keyboard used to be more reliable and allowed us to have different languages be typed at once, now it's practically impossible, and really really frustrating to do so.

I have never struggled with this. Like at all. To me this keyboard feels far better and more well-spaced. If you want to do comma or full stop with only one touch, tap and hold the 123 button, with your finger still pressed on the screen, slide it over to the character you want, then let go on it and it will change back to letters :)

I live in Louisville and for some reason, it always tries to change it to Louisvillle and it’s driving me crazy.

Slide typing is the worst feature I’ve been using recently, it’s been making me type and delete several times. I just don’t quit it because I’m kinda addicted to it. 😅

As a multi-language user, SwiftKey on Android is literally the only feature I miss. Being able to seamlessly write in different languages within the same sentence without needing to tap anything is by far the feature I miss most.

I got used to the iPhone’s keyboard after a while. It was weird using it for the first times but got used to it after a while and disabled autocorrect.

On my iPad, the keyboard works just fine. You can get the numbers by swiping down the top keys and on the other keys cou can get symbols that way. Also, when autocorrect does a mistake and you delete the word to retype it, it won't correct it anymore.

Have no problem with the iPhone keyboard 👍🏻