I have a love-hate relationship with autocorrect. It’s incredibly useful for correcting my typos and mistakes in real time, but also immensely frustrating when I send something I didn’t mean to due to an autocorrection. Here are a few tips and tricks to better manage your keyboard and get the most out of it.
Keyboard Tips and Tricks for iOS
Reset Your Personalized Dictionary
Over time, your iPhone learns which words you like to use and how you use them. If autocorrect seems to suggest words that are not a part of your texting/typing vocabulary anymore, you can reset the keyboard suggestions to their factory default setting. Simply navigate to Settings > General > Reset (It’s at the bottom of the list). Tap “Reset Keyboard Dictionary” and iPhone will take care of the rest.
Toggle Various Keyboard Settings
There are many settings for the iOS keyboard which can be found in Settings > General > Keyboards. In addition to adding multiple keyboards (i.e. third-party keyboards like “Swype”, emoji keyboards and other languages), you can adjust several basic keyboard features:
- Auto-Capitalization: toggles whether or not iPhone automatically corrects capitalization errors like formal names/places, the beginning of sentences, etc. Here’s an example:
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Without: i had a great time in seattle last october with sarah.
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With: I had a great time in Seattle last October with Sarah.
- Auto-Correction: toggles the auto-correction feature that corrects your spelling as you type.
- Enable Caps Lock: allows you to double tap the shift key to TURN ON CAPS LOCK (Watch out, people may think you are shouting).
- Predictive (iOS 8 Only): enables suggested words above the keyboard.
- “.” Shortcut: allows you to double tap the space bar to insert a period followed by a space.
- Check Spelling: Underlines misspelled words in red.
- Enable Dictation: Toggles microphone button that acts as a speech-to-text function.
Keyboard Tips and Tricks for Mac OS X
Dismiss an Autocorrect Suggestion
On a Mac, you can easily dismiss an autocorrect suggestion by clicking the “X” button. Alternatively, you can press the ESC key and the auto-correction will not apply. Just like iPhone, Mac’s autocorrect system learns as you type, so if you dismiss an autocorrection a few times, it will never show you that particular one again.
Toggle Autocorrect
On Mac, toggling autocorrect on and off is simple. Open System Preferences and navigate to Keyboard > Text. Click the “Correct spelling automatically” box to turn the feature on and off.
Tricks for Both iOS and Mac OS X
Enable Text Replacement Shortcuts
If there is a phrase you type very often, you can use shortcuts to replace just a few letters with an entire word or phrase. It functions just as autocorrect would, only replacing it with a predetermined phrase. For example “omw” becomes “On my way!” or “gtg” could become “Sorry, gotta run. I’ll text you when I get a chance.”
On iPhone, you can find the “Shortcuts” section in Settings > Keyboard > Shortcuts. Tap the “+” in the top right to add new shortcuts, or tap any one in the list to edit.
On Mac, “shortcuts” are called “replace with,” since the shortcut menu on Mac is dedicated to traditional keyboard commands (Like ?-C to copy, or ?-Alt-Esc to force quit).
Have any other cool keyboard tips and tricks to improve the typing experience? Let us know in the comments below!