iOS – Tips and Tricks: Keyboard

See “Shortcuts” near the bottom.

 I am hoping to do lots of these little guys, since they are pretty useful and only take 5 minutes. In preparation for my first Google+ Hangout on Air on Saturday (around 1PM), I would like to give you a taste of the kind of little things you can expect to learn in 2 days time. This little trick isn’t that new, but I have found it to be extremely useful, even if you only use it for this one purpose.

Basically, on iPhone (or iPod or iPad), under Settings> General> Keyboard, right at the bottom is an area titled “Shortcuts”. This allows you to create shorthand phrases for things you commonly type into your phone (for me, that is my long, annoying email address). As you can see, I have set it up so that when I type the characters ratt into anywhere on the phone, my email will pop up as an “auto-correct” type popup. Simply hitting space, or pressing on the popup itself will complete the entire address, saving you a lot of switching between keyboards for the various characters needed for email addresses. This is something I use every single day, and that everyone should know about.

I hope you can make good use of it! I am expecting to get together a short instructional post about signing up for a Google+ account, which will be required to actually participate in my Hangout, this should be available in the next 24 hours. However, if you are impatient, you can visit plus.google.com, or download the Google+ app from either your iDevice or your Android phone/tablet, and follow the instructions, which are pretty straightforward. If you already have a Google (or Gmail) account, things couldn’t be simpler, all you have to do is accept the terms for Google+ and you are ready to go.