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If you have an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, and have updated your device to iOS 5, the new operating system, you are probably having fun exploring the 200 new features in the update.
As with any update, you will discover features you like and others that you don’t really care about or use. But there’s one feature I found that is so incredibly useful that I miss it when I’m not typing on the iPhone. That’s right, it makes typing on the iPhone easier than on a computer keyboard.
The feature is Keyboard Shortcuts. When you use this feature, you type just a few letters and the iPhone uses Autocorrect to change what you typed into what you wanted to type. For example, set a shortcut with your initials to type out your whole name. I set the shortcut “cnm” for Carolyn Nicander Mohr. Set one for your email address. I set “gml” for [email protected]. If you have a website, set a shortcut for your website address. I set “urlwot” for https://wonderoftech.com.
If you use certain terms a lot when you send a text message or email, set a shortcut for those terms. Set one for your home address so you can use the Shortcuts when you’re filling in forms. Imagine, filling in forms on an iPhone can be easier than on a computer!
What you shouldn’t use Shortcuts for: your passwords, credit card numbers, social security number and any other confidential information.
You also should be careful of the Shortcut you choose. Make sure the combination of letters don’t form a word, otherwise Autocorrect may insert the shortcut where you don’t want it to go!
How to Set Up a Shortcut
To set up Keyboard Shortcuts, go to Settings => General => Keyboard => Shortcuts. Click on the + sign in the upper right corner of the screen. Then type in the phrase you want shortened and the shortcut below it. Then press Save in the upper left corner.
Go to your email, Notes or Message app to test the shortcut to see if it worked.
If you end up adding so many shortcuts that you forget what you added, no worries. Just go back into Settings => Keyboard => Shortcuts and you will see a list of all of the shortcuts you have saved.
If you have more than one iOS device, such as an iPhone and iPad, make sure you have set up the same shortcuts on both devices. Otherwise you will drive yourself crazy trying to remember which device has which shortcut!
Bottom Line
Make typing on your virtual keyboard easier by setting up keyboard shortcuts for your iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch!
Have you used Keyboard Shortcuts? Do you like to save keystrokes when typing? Did you ever think you would actually like Autocorrect? Let us know in the Comments section below!
Image by Keith Ramsey
I’m going to check that out now! I can think of so many uses, and since typing is awkward on an iPad, this should prove very handy! Thanks!
BTW, do you have any advice about iMessage? It’s worked great for me, but a friend was complaining about it today not working properly–not sending some messages. (Ran into him this morning, and he told me he was “iBitching”! Ha!)
Hi Kathy, I thought of you when I was writing this. I know Autocorrect hasn’t been a friend of yours, but maybe that’s about to change?
I haven’t had any troubles with iMessage. Is your friend using it from his iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch? Any problems I had sending out texts were before I updated to iOS 5 and had to do with having no connection from my carrier.
Now that’s cool Carolyn and I can see why that would be nice to have. Typing on that little pad is hard for me since I’m not use to it so this will really be a time saver.
I haven’t upgraded it yet though. Thought I would wait a little longer until the rush is over with. Will be keeping this one for referencing when the time comes.
Thanks again for this cool info.
Have a great week!
~Adrienne
Hi Adrienne, You’re right, there are many, many cool features of iOS 5, but Keyboard Shortcuts is my favorite. If I miss a feature when I’m on another device (such as a computer), then that’s a good sign that the device works for me.
Adrienne, I’m pretty sure the rush is over, though you may have more pressing items on your to do list. Just make sure you remember this handy trick when you do update your iPod Touch. This feature makes typing on the virtual keyboard much easier.
Hope you have a great week too!
Carolyn
SOOOOO cool! Going to do that now! You are my new favourite blogger Carolyn. Really great tips.
Thanks, Ruth! I’m so glad you like this tip. It certainly makes typing on an iPhone easier. I never thought I’d be filling in an online form on my computer and suddenly wish I were using my iPhone, but that’s what has happened!
I hope you’re able to make good use of this feature, Ruth. 🙂
Ahh.. sweet. Didn’t know that. In fact, I am still not on iOS5.
Long back (may be 12+ yrs), when I used more Unix than anything else, I used this on vi editor all the time. You can set Macros to do the exact same, and even much more. A few keystrokes actually can execute a bunch of edit commands too.
Something to tell about the original Unix Operating system, that powers the Mac OS X or Linux today. Its immensely powerful, and is even relevant today (30yrs after it was written).
Hi iRewardChart, Yes, Keyboard Shortcuts is a lot like Macros. I was thinking about macros as I discovered this cool feature. I used to write macros in DOS way back before Windows and loved how they saved time. If you wanted to, you could have paragraphs, form letters, etc. saved as macros.
I’m all for tools that help you save time so you can move on to the important things.
So, are you planning on upgrading to iOS 5, iRewardChart, or are you waiting until you upgrade your phone to get the new operating system?
Hi Carolyn,
I haven’t tested that many of the new features in iOS 5, but this is now my favorite trick as well. I have a fairly long name, and I just tested adding my name as a shortcut (jpb = Jens-Petter Berget) and it works great.
I’m going to save a lot of time by doing this.
Thank you!
Hi Jens, You’re right, this feature is a huge time saver. Also try entering the url of your website as a shortcut. It really saves time when you are commenting on blogs from your iPhone or iPad.
That’s true, I didn’t think about that. I have been trying to comment from my iPad, and it works, but it takes a lot more time than when I’m using my Mac 🙂
Really cool Carolyn!
I need to see if Callie’s iPad 2 is updated to the newest operating system. I’m a major user of keyboard shortcuts on my pc so having those on the iPad would be AWESOME!!!
Also, I found a work around for the flash issue. I downloaded Puffin browser and that lets me see flash online. It’s a little slow, but it’s better than nothing.
Thanks,
Bryce
Hi Bryce,
I’m so glad you like this fantastic feature. The more you hate typing on a virtual keyboard, the more you will love this feature.
I agree with you, I’m a big fan of keyboard shortcuts on the computer so being able to create them on an iPhone and iPad is amazing.
You may want to check out the Skyfire browser. It handles some Flash video quite well, plus seems to be able to handle commenting on wordpress.com blogs better than Safari.
This is great, but I don’t get it. What’s wrong with using this for your passwords? Seems like it would save a lot of time.
Hi Just, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! Great question. If you save your passwords with an easy shortcut, like ABC, well, that’s very similar to having your password be ABC. If anyone gets their hands on your device, you can imagine they will be checking out the easy passwords first, such as ABC. Even if you have a 25 character, impossible to decipher password, if your shortcut for the password is ABC, it really doesn’t matter anymore.
Keyboard Shortcuts is a very handy feature, but it’s important to use it sparingly.
Thanks for your visit and your awesome question! 🙂
Also, I tried using the shortcut for my password but found it doesn’t work in a password field.
Hi Bill, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! I’m glad shortcuts aren’t allowed for passwords. Your passwords are too important to have shortcuts enabled for them. You shouldn’t use shortcuts for credit card numbers either. If your iPhone or iPad were were lost or stolen, you wouldn’t want anyone to have access to this vital information from the Shortcuts page in Settings.
I absolutely agree with you – it would be too easy to grab sensitive info that way. That said, iPad passwords require a minimum of 8 characters including a number, a capital letter and a special character. Since numbers and special characters are on a different keyboard screen – it becomes tedious to log in every time I download an app. If anyone knows a way to simplify password entry without compromising security, please let us know.
Sounds amazing Carolyn!
No wonder why it is your favorite! Surely the keywords shortcut is something that would win anyone over. I for myself, have a problem at times typing on my cell phone- but this seems so cool- and easier said than done! And yes, saving time is something that all of us need to work on, thus anything making us do that is worth investing in.
Thanks for the letting us all know about it 🙂
Hi Harleena, Yes, between Siri and Keyboard Shortcuts, I don’t have to type on my iPhone very much. The less I have to type, the happier I am! You’re not alone in struggling to type on your cell phone. Remember when all we had to do was dial our phones? 🙂
This is cool haven’t figure this out yet I might as well give this short cut a try. I think that will be the fastest way to type message. Thanks a lot for sharing.
Short cuts sound like a good idea. I’m not keen on virtual keyboards I tried to use one the other day on a SAT NAV. I’ll try it with a stylus pen next time. It was my friend’s SAT NAV and it wasn’t very useful but I think it was because he set it on shortest route. Shortest route here takes you over speed humps! I like predictive text and Google is doing a lot of research into that. I think word processors will, in a few years time, be able to predict what we want to write.
I have a lot of new photographs and so I’m using those in my blogs. I’m trying to decide on a photograph for today’s blog; the subject is psychology! The light now is different because the sun seems lower in the sky even at midday giving interesting shadows. It’s impossible to shoot into the sun now, the photographs become really dark. I have a lot of photographs of buildings to use now and so I might do a blog with just buildings next week. I think my photography has improved a lot this year and I’m getting interesting picture and colours.
Hi Mike, using a stylus is a great idea if you’re struggling with a virtual keyboard. Not all virtual keyboards are alike, though. I think Sat Nav keyboards are quite difficult. Several models of Android phones have physical keyboards, which is the main reason why some people use Android phones over iPhones.
Shortest route can get you in trouble with Sat Navs. You can end up traveling single track roads most of the way instead of the motorways.
Sweet, we have our board meeting tomorrow and I am going to strongly suggest we pull the trigger already and get these new phones………….I can’t wait……………….
Great idea, Bill. I can’t wait to learn what powers of persuasion you use to convince the board that iPhones are the only way to go. Remember, all is fair in love and iPhones! 😉
Carolyn – This is a great find, and who else could I have expected to enlighten us other than you 🙂 This is a real time-saver, I am gonna spend my next few hours configuring these little gems. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Praveen, I’m glad you like this tip. It shouldn’t take you long to set up these shortcuts, though I don’t know how many shortcuts you are setting up, lol! 🙂
Guess what…. this feature is on the blackberry, too and I love it! Well, it is not as obvious as it is on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch but it is there and I make use of it…. it makes life much easier… even though typing on the iphone is a bit more frustrating than on a BB with a QWERTY keypad.
Still, I need to set this up on my iPhone when I get mine soon 🙂
Hi Gabriella, Yes, I know that other smartphones have had this feature for a while. Often the iPhone isn’t the first to get such features. But when the iPhone gets a very handy new feature, I like to tell everyone so they can enjoy it too!
You’re right, typing on an iPhone is much more challenging than typing on a BlackBerry, which is why getting Keyboard Shortcuts on the iPhone is so exciting!
Let us know when you get your iPhone! Very excited for you. 🙂
This will save you a lot of time. So this is one step further towards improving the iPhone typing experience. 🙂
By the way, I used your screenshot in my today’s post. Make sure you check it!
Have a great day!
Mouh
Now this certainly looks handy. I’d explore that on the internet whether my android phone can have this feature or not.
The only thing is missing for the keyboard shortcuts is synchronisation in the cloud. so to have the same shortcuts on all my ios devices (and sometimes i miss them already in Lion).
Hi Christian, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech. Great idea! Having shortcuts sync to the cloud so they can be consistent among devices would be very handy. Keyboard shortcuts are a handy feature but it can be a hassle to enter the shortcuts on each device. Syncing them among devices would be very handy!
Any clue as to the max number of shortcuts allowed? I’m using this feature extensively but I’ve recently started feeling that some of my earlier shortcuts get deleted when I add a new one.
Hi Kalpit, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! I haven’t heard of a limit to the number of shortcuts allowed in iOS. But I imagine with a lot of shortcuts, it can become difficult to keep them straight in your mind. I have set about five shortcuts and haven’t had any problem with them. Please let us know if you discover a limit. If any other readers discover a limit, please post your discovery here!
Hi Carolyn, Thanks for you reply. I’m using the shortcuts to fix up my habits of web-lingo. By doing which my ‘ur’ is converted to ‘your’, ‘tht’ to ‘that’ and so on. So you can imagine the number of shortcuts I have. But if there is a limit, then I’d rather prioritize some of those shortcuts. Thanks for your help again.
Hi Kalpit, Wow, it looks as if you are making great use of the Shortcuts feature. Thanks for letting us know your shortcuts. Please keep us posted! 🙂