A former Apple employee is going viral on TikTok where he posts what he knows best: Tricks and tricks about the iPhone. A few days ago, I showed you 12 iPhone battery life-saving tricks from the same ex-Apple employee.
I already use nine of them to boost battery life on my iPhone 14 Pro. Some of them are easy to guess, and many longtime iPhone users might be employing a few of them to improve their overall iPhone experience. After all, the little tricks are what will make your iPhone experience better the more seasoned an owner you are.
The iPhone keyboard tricks the same Tyler Morgan shared in new TikTok clips are also part of the same category of useful tips that might change how you use your iPhone for the better. Like the battery tricks, some of them are easy to discover, and I’ve been using many of them for years.
Others might not be obvious. Morgan’s clips helped me discover a keyboard trick I’ll have to incorporate into my iPhone routines.
Type numbers faster
The first clip Morgan shared starts with an iPhone keyboard trick that many longtime users might know: Typing numbers quickly. You don’t have to press and release the numbers keypad to get access to numbers. Instead, just press and hold on to the 123 key, and the numbers will appear. Tap the numbers you wanted, then release the 123 key to return to the QWERTY keyboard.
I’ll add that the same trick works if you’re on the numbers keyboard. Press and hold the #+= keypad to bring up the additional symbols, select the ones you need, and release. You’ll be back to the numbers keyboard.
Finally, you can use the same exact trick to get fast access to capital letters. Just tap and hold the up arrow to get the QWERTY caps keyboard.
The video that Morgan shared had nearly 17 million views at the time of this writing. It contains additional iPhone tips you might find useful. Check it out below:
A second clip with over 4.3 million views also comes with a few handy iPhone tricks, including a few keyboard-specific ones. Unlike the previous video, you’ll find the keyboard tricks after some 20 seconds, though I advise watching the entire video, especially if you’re new to the iPhone.
The first iPhone keyboard trick in this video concerns Caps Lock. If you need to type in all caps, aka shout, you’ll want to double-tap the up arrow and then text away. I will warn you, however, that you have to have the Enable Caps Lock setting toggled on in the Keyboard section of the General menu from the Settings app.
The next iPhone keyboard tip concerns a trick the first video revealed: Pressing and holding on any key will trigger an action. You can press and hold with letters, numbers, and symbols to get different versions of that letter or additional symbols. This is great if you need to type letters in a different language. You don’t have to change the keyboard to a local one to get access to them.
The keyboard trick that surprised me
But the next iPhone keyboard trick that Morgan shared blew my mind. It’s something I have no idea you could do, and I’ll try to remember henceforward. If you type the wrong number, keep pressing, and you can select the number you wanted.
This also works for some symbols, and it’s a variation of the press-and-hold gesture above. That means it’ll work only for the characters that don’t have additional symbols attached to them. Still, it’s a quick trick that can improve your productivity. Rather than deleting a mistyped number, you can just keep holding to select the correct one.
The best iPhone keyboard trick of all time
Finally, Morgan also shared my favorite iPhone keyboard trick of all time, one of the best things Apple ever did to improve typing on the iPhone: Press and hold on the Space bar will turn the entire keyboard into a trackpad.
The ex-Apple employee did it by mistake in the following clip below, showing how you can quickly navigate large chunks of typed text with ease. You’ll be able to move the cursor exactly where you want it to rather than attempting to tap your way into the right position. This almost always fails.
Like the previous videos, this last TikTok also contains handy iPhone tricks you might want to check out:
