Reduces the number of mistakes you make as you type by intelligently and dynamically resizing the touch zones for certain keys. The iPad increases the zones for keys it predicts might come next and decreases the zones for keys that are unlikely or impossible to come next. Cool!
Anticipating what comes next
The keyboard takes an educated stab at the next word you mean to type and presents what it surmises to be the best possible word choices front and center. Say you’re in the Messages app and the last message you received was an invitation to lunch or dinner. Above the row of keys on the iPad keyboard, you’d see buttons with three word suggestions: Dinner, Lunch, and Not sure (as shown in Figure 2-9). If one of those was the appropriate response, you could tap the button to insert its text into your reply.
A KEYBOARD FOR ALL BORDERS
Apple expanded the iPad’s reach globally with international keyboard layouts for dozens of languages. To access a keyboard that isn’t customized for Americanized English, tap Settings ⇒ General ⇒ Keyboard ⇒ Keyboards ⇒ Add New Keyboard. Then flick through the list to select any keyboard you want to use. Up pops the list shown in the figure, with custom keyboards for German, Italian, Japanese, and so on. Apple even supplies four versions of French (including keyboards geared to Belgium, Canadian, and Swiss customers) and several keyboards for Chinese. Heck, you can even find Australian, Canadian, Indian, Singapore, and UK versions of English.
Have a multilingual household? You can select as many of these international keyboards as you might need by tapping the language in the list.
When you’re in an app that summons a keyboard, tap the international keyboard key (globe icon) in the lower left until the keyboard you want to call on shows up. (If you see an emoji key with a smiley face, tap it to switch to the globe icon.) Tap again to choose the next keyboard in the corresponding list of international keyboards that you turned on in Settings. If you keep tapping, you come back to your original keyboard. Or press against the globe icon until you see the list of all the keyboards you’ve added. You’ll also see the Predictive switch above the list of keyboards that you’ve added to your iPad.
To remove a keyboard that you’ve already added to your list, tap the Edit button in the upper-right corner of the Keyboard settings screen displaying your enabled keyboards and then tap the red circle with the white horizontal line that appears next to the language to which you want to say adios.
Meanwhile, your iPad keypad is even more fluent with iPadOS. You can now type in two languages at once, without switching keyboards. You can type with any pair of the following languages: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. This multilingual typing feature is also supported for English and Chinese.
FIGURE 2-9: The iPad keyboard predicts what you might want to type next.
If you wanted to respond with something different than the three options presented by Apple, you’d just type your response with the regular QWERTY keys. As you type additional letters and words, the three suggested word choices above the keyboard change in real time. For instance, if you start by typing That's a in your message, the new trio of word choice buttons that show up might be great, good, and very.
To exploit the predictive text feature, make sure the Predictive setting is turned on (as it is by default). Go to Settings ⇒ General ⇒ Keyboards, and slide the Predictive switch to on.
Discovering the special-use keys
The iPad keyboard contains several keys that don’t actually type a character. Here’s the scoop on each of these keys:
Shift: If you’re using the alphabetical keyboard, the shift key switches between uppercase and lowercase letters. You can tap the key to change the case, or hold down shift and slide to the letter you want to be capitalized.
Typewriter: Enable the Split Keyboard option (tap Settings ⇒ General ⇒ Keyboards), and you can split the keyboard in a thumb-typist-friendly manner, as shown in Figure 2-10. When you’re ready to split your keyboard, press and hold down the typewriter icon key, and tap Split on the menu. From that menu you can also dock the keyboard to the bottom of the screen. When you want to bring the keyboard back together, press and hold down the typewriter icon key again and choose either Merge or Dock and Merge from the menu. Another option in the typewriter key is Floating. Tap Floating to shrink your keyboard to a smaller version that you can then drag. Tap and drag the gray bar at the bottom of the floating keyboard to drag it where you want it; if you drag to the bottom of the screen, you redock the keyboard and expand it to its full size.FIGURE 2-10: Press and hold down the typewriter icon key to split the keyboard.
#+= or 123: If you’re using a keyboard that shows only numbers and symbols, the traditional shift key is replaced with a key labeled #+= or 123. Pressing that key toggles between keyboards that just have symbols and numbers.
Emoji: Tap this key and you can punctuate your words by adding smiley faces and other emojis.
International keyboard: You see this key only if you’ve turned on an international (or third-party) keyboard, as explained in the nearby sidebar “A keyboard for all borders.”
Delete: Tapping this key (otherwise known as the backspace key) erases the character immediately to the left of the cursor.
Return: This key moves the cursor to the beginning of the next line. You might find this key labeled Go or Search, depending on the app you’re using.
Dictation: Tap the microphone icon and start talking. The iPad listens to what you have to say. Tap the key again, and the iPad attempts to convert your words into text. You can use this dictation feature in many of the instances in which you can summon the keyboard, including the built-in Notes and Mail apps, as well as many third-party apps. See Chapter 14 for more on dictation. When you use dictation, the things you say are recorded and sent to Apple, which converts your words into text. Just make sure to proofread what you’ve said because the process isn’t foolproof. Apple also collects other information, including your first name and nickname, the names and nicknames of folks in your contacts list, song names in Music, and more. Apple says it anonymizes this information, which helps the Dictation feature perform its duties. If any of this freaks you out, however, tap Settings ⇒ General ⇒ Keyboard and slide the Enable Dictation switch to off. You can also restrict the use of dictation in Settings, as explained in Chapter 15.
On the top row of the keyboards that pop up in certain apps — Mail and Notes, for instance — tap the Aa button at the top left of the keyboard to find B, I, U, and s formatting keys. These permit you to bold, italicize, underline, or strikethrough selected text, respectively. Other formatting options, depending on the app you're using, might include paragraph