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Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?

• RAdrien 4y ago
  I made far fewer mistakes and could type faster using the BlackBerry physical thumb keyboard. Apple should sell attachable thumb keyboards for their phones.
  • warrenm 4y ago
    fwiw ... nothing prevents you from attaching an external bluetooth keyboard to your iPhone :)
• Jemm 4y ago
  Seems like a change to how touch is recognized. Used to be a light tap registered and now it requires a much more pronounced touch. Really sucks for us touch typists.
• chadcmulligan 4y ago
  Glad my iPhone 6 with Swipe is still going.
• dev_0 4y ago
  You are old
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • dummdeedumdum 4y ago
    I distinctly recall my txt experience on the 2007 iphone being one where I could just type and not need to worry about predictive text not doing it's job. At the time I was working for a company who's product was a federated text client. And the results were good. I could type sentences without looking and when I looked down, most of the time what I expected was there--no correction needed. Perhaps this is where predicting sentence structure or personal idioms does not work as well when applied to too wide a scale.
• Blackstrat 4y ago
  Definitely and unequivocally getting worse. Seems to be the trend on most consumer devices. The latest interface on the Kindle, for instance, verges on unusable. Whoever signed off on that should be fired.
• socrates399 4y ago
  Mobile screens and devices are optimized for ad-display. Everything else is de-emphasized or getting more and more broken.
• lofaszvanitt 4y ago
  well it was always shit, and text selection/cursor placement was even shittier use glide typing or install gboard
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• turtlebits 4y ago
  For how big fingers are, it does a pretty good job. Word selection is just a long press. A long press on space works well for moving the cursor. Definitely better than the loupe we used to have.
  • mikelward 4y ago
    Gboard manages to do a good job on a 1.4" watch screen.
• ivank 4y ago
  Gboard often does a much better job with autocorrect.
• I-Robot 4y ago
  Yes, I absolutely agree with you. It is WAY worse than it has ever been. What you described is exactly what I have been plagued with... (I never thought I was messing up, because it was such a DRASTICALLY different experience)
• CobaltFire 4y ago
  I’ve been having the exact same issues and thought it was just me. Thanks for putting words to it and posting it.
• markus_zhang 4y ago
  Vent: I'm on Android and still haven't seen a well done cursor scroll. It usually requires me to select the position accurately which is PITA. I wish there was a simple way to do that.
  • modeless 4y ago
    Can I also vent about the lack of undo? I consider undo one of the most essential features of any computing device. How is it still simply not supported on the most widely used computing platform?
    • climb_stealth 4y ago
      There's nothing like the feeling after typing a whole paragraph and accidentally deleting it without any way to undo. :) Anything more than a sentence I type in a notes app because of that
    • arcanemachiner 4y ago
      On Android, undo is supported, but your keyboard has to support it. Sometimes I have to open Hacker Keyboard just I can press Ctrl+Z. There's probably a better way, but that works for the two times a year that I need it.
      • modeless 4y ago
        That's amazing, I need Hacker Keyboard apparently. All the features GBoard has and they never thought to add an undo button option?
    • asudosandwich 4y ago
      Try tapping with three fingers to bring up a set of editing operations including undo & redo.
      • modeless 4y ago
        Seems like this is an iOS thing? I'm talking about Android.
• twobitshifter 4y ago
  I think it might be worse, especially the cursor stuff, but also consider that your iPhone 12 mini has a smaller keyboard than the SE, since it’s not quite as wide. You might try enabling haptic feedback which is new in ios16.
• accountfrhacker 4y ago
  Hello you might be interested in some slide out keyboards Android like astro https://www.androidauthority.com/keyboard-phones-845839/ https://www.androidauthority.com/keyboard-phones-845839/ You can even root some of them and install lineagos
• cactus-bussin 4y ago
  With the new UI updates here are a few things that I find help. • 1. Turning ON haptics in the keyboard section • 2. Turn OFF the “suggestions” • 3. Teach the autocorrect what I want to type. (Correct the same word a few times and you will trigger machine learning) • 4. Turn keyboard sound OFF • 5. Grab the cursor directly, don’t use the “spacebar trick” unless you’re going to move to the front or end of an input box (treat it like PGUP/PGDWN)
  • ivanech 4y ago
    Just made these changes and the improvement is insaaaane. The most important one IMO is turning off “Predictive” typing. Leaves more room for keys and screen and I never tapped those suggestions anyway. This feels so much better. Thank you.
  • dopidopHN 4y ago
    Do you know why it seems to works with some folks but not other? For instance I fed so much French vocabulary to autocorrect, at this point it's convenient. But some other person in this thread was reporting failing to have autocorrect memorise his/her foreign name.
• koinedad 4y ago
  I agree something feels different, I could usually mitigate it with 3D Touch but that was changed a few phones back: https://technicallychallenged.substack.com/p/my-favorite-iphone-feature-was-removed https://technicallychallenged.substack.com/p/my-favorite-iph...
• wrycoder 4y ago
  Totally agree about cursor scrolling. Half the time, it has no idea where my finger is. Since I discovered Apple’s slide-to-type[0], I rarely have to key the letters, since the algo guesses more accurately than when I actually use individual keystrokes. Also, with stt, the delete erases the whole word, so corrections are faster, too. [0] https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/how-to-use-the-iphones-new-slide-to-type-keyboard-in-ios-13/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/how-to-use-the-iphones-new-...
  • blondin 4y ago
    +1 for cursor scrolling. the URL/address bar on mobile is a perfect case in point. or any single-line text box for that matter. as it is, this is a useless widget because of scrolling and text selection. we need a shift of paradigm here. the text box is not working on mobile.
    • tiahura 4y ago
      +1 Doesn’t Tim Cook ever use cursor scrolling? It’s damned near useless. I usually wind up just backspacing from the end to get to where I need to edit.
  • kbrkbr 4y ago
    This. However if I do not hit space in between words every time, an autocorrect function replaces at random times the word I’m typing/sliding now plus the word I typed before by some utter nonsense combination. I hate this so much, but I have not found a way to turn it off. Autocorrect is off.
• graeme 4y ago
  I turned off autocorrect a few years back, and noticed no change in recent years with that turned off. But the autocorrect experience was very bad and in my view caused more errors than it fixed
  • junofan 4y ago
    I’ve turned it off as well and go raw. It doesn’t work period when talking about new concepts. No issues so far. People are more forgiving about typos these days anyway.
• dawnerd 4y ago
  I wish there was an autocorrect for obvious errors, not changing context of a word like hell -> he'll, well -> we'll, nickel -> Nicole (this is a weird one), and many more. Better yet, it should just underline the word and let me manually correct it like software used to before everyone tried to do ai nonsense. Apparently that red underline is part of the OS but I don't recall actually seeing it.
  • awinter-py 4y ago
    +1 -- better manual editing UX is necessary for every kind of statistical input, especially voice
  • riversflow 4y ago
    You can do this! Settings -> General -> Keyboard -> Auto-Correction [off] & Check Spelling [on]. Reading a lot of the complaints here, they really need to create some sort of onboarding for the keyboard and make it more transparent what the switches do in the settings menu. I was pretty pissed when they launched slide to type, until I played with these and found that turning predictive off feels waaay better. It took me a little bit to get used to, but I’m much happier now and can type multiple words with out looking at the keyboard. My settings: Auto Capitalization: On *Auto-Correction: Off Check Spelling: On Enable Caps Lock: On *Predictive: Off Smart Punctuation: On[1] *Slide to Type: Off Character Preview: On “.” Shortcut: On Some of these are personal preference, but the ones I put with a star greatly effect the way the keyboard types. I’ve been using iPhones since 2011, so I’m used to the last two for example, but if you don’t use slide to type it screws with the touch targets big time, and the Predictive setting is the one most people here are frustrated with. That said, I think the keyboard was better about 10 years ago when it had some slight prediction baked in. [1] I think smart punctuation only really applies in english to "" -> “”, I think it looks nicer, but can be a nightmare if you are trying to type a sting literal on the phone and don’t realize it’s a thing, definitely something to be aware of, lol.
    • dawnerd 4y ago
      Guess it shows how long it’s been since I've even been in those settings, last I remember there was just like two or three options. But realizing with auto correct off it doesn’t auto capitalize I like I’d expect. There’s still some improvements to be had
• awinter-py 4y ago
  when ios launched it was competing with blackberry, a 55wpm mobile keyboard that I could use without looking. now it's competing with droid, and most droid devices are lower-end so whatever the experience on flagship devices, it's going to be much worse on average not what you asked but: I recently booted an android 10 pixel 1, 5ish years old, 3 OS versions behind current, and keyboard input was starkly better than my normal droid 12 device (both tap keyboard + swipe keyboard)
  • kyriakos 4y ago
    Which keyboard app are you using? It can't be the same on both
    • awinter-py 4y ago
      default system keyboard
• josefrichter 4y ago
  I feel like something changed with autocorrect and the default correction is often wrong. And then sometimes I see myself getting a word auto corrected 3 times before I type it in a way that’s corrected properly, or I need to select the right suggestion manually. It feels like autocorrect stopped looking at the whole sentence for context and often just corrects to something that doesn’t make any sense. It didn’t use to be like that I think, but it’s all subjective feelings.
  • rdtwo 4y ago
    It’s some sort of oddity where v and b sometimes autocorrect add words. All sorts of weird behavior seem to happen. I also noticed the trend of it getting better then again worse
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• alamortsubite 4y ago
  > cursor scrolling using either the spacebar trick or a hard press on screen is a complete mess This sounds a lot like Android, so welcome to the party. On the other hand, swipe typing has been the bomb for over a decade. Since it's now available on iOS, give it a chance. Maybe you'll find it makes up for the iPhone's recent declines.
• egberts1 4y ago
  Not to mention, auto accidents have risen sharply with these non-clickable on-screen keyboards.
• semireg 4y ago
  Thank you for asking. It’s definitely worse. I keep wishing there was a way to roll back or trial new keyboard behavior engines. This experience is powered by a lot of data, none of which we can see or edit. If I could go in and unlearn some things it’s learned, that’d be nice. Safelist. Blocklist. So many things to tinker with, out of reach. It’s really sad because it’s the essence of accessibility.
• hotpotamus 4y ago
  I'll add my old man rant that physical keyboards are terrible now, and I somewhat blame Apple. Everyone seems to want as flat a keyboard as possible which does look pretty stylish I'll admit, but is not as ergonomic as the old Dell cheapo membrane keyboards. It makes sense on a laptop, but not on a dedicated keyboard. I fully acknowledge that it might just be the era of keyboards I grew up with and prefer, and luckily I can still find the old ones I like at Goodwill for $3, so my cup runeth over anyway. As for phone keyboards, I've never been great with them but typing on a glass screen is a bundle of compromises anyway, and I haven't noticed them any worse lately. I remember reading that the touch spots for the keys are actually dynamically changing under your fingers as you type based on context, so I wouldn't be surprised if something changed and bit you though.
  • anikom15 4y ago
    It’s cost. The flat keyboards use less plastic. The membrane mechanism doesn’t require much precision either. Flat keyboards with scissor switches are more expensive and feel a little better (and last longer). Full-size keyboards are superior and are still sold, but usually as a ‘premium’ option.
• crossroadsguy 4y ago
  My name is not an English word and it’s been years but the phones (3 iPhones) have never been able to predict it correctly ever. They always predict some English word — even longer and shorter. I must have typed it a trillion times on my phone by now. But no, still not. It’s the same name on my iCloud and hence on my phone. In contact book obviously. In all the email accounts I’ve added. I have tried correcting it and accepting the suggestion in quotes. Doesn’t work. But no.
  • webmobdev 4y ago
    I always advise everyone that the first thing they should do on any on-screen-display keyboards is to disable autocorrect and suggestions. This makes it easier to type, avoid the irritation of sub-par corrections and best of all turns of keylogging (when all these "extra" features are enabled (as then their ToS allows them an excuse to store everything you type in their cloud, to "improve their service").
  • dopidopHN 4y ago
    wait. I really, really don't care about my phone so I never looked that up. But my 2016 Iphone SE "learned" french. I text in French and English on a 40/60 split. Auto-correct will feed me results in both language. I assumed that every time I was correcting autocorrect to be able to type a french words, that was going to a small DB somewhere on the phone. It's not the case? Like.. then where are those french autocorrected words coming from? And to your original point : why the hell is not name not memorized by now?
    • specialist 4y ago
      > why the hell is not name not memorized Or why proper nouns from Contacts aren't included in the typing dictionary.
• heckerhut 4y ago
  THANK YOU. I thought I was going insane. This shit is broken. Wow.
• summerlight 4y ago
  I've been using iPhone >10 years and cannot agree more. One example: from iOS 7 (that flat UI), I began to make much more frequent typos than ever before. Before that, I didn't make much typo before the update even without looking at the keyboard but not anymore after the update. What I heard is that Apple did extensive studies on usability of virtual keyboard when it's launching iPhone and as a result keyboard visual on the screen was intentionally off from the actual layout based on actual typing patterns. And for some reason it seems they scrapped that idea, or at least changed it significantly. Don't know why. Maybe I'm an outlier and everyone else is happier with the change. But this is just one example; almost every 2~3 years, I've experienced a noticeable level of degradation of my typing accuracy, though not as much as the iOS 7 change. I wonder if there's anyone else whose experience matches to mine.
  • mickelsen 4y ago
    Nope, you are not alone. I noticed this change starting with iOS 7 too and compared side-by-side back in those years. I could type very quickly with either one or both hands, and made almost no mistakes. So yeah, it seemed that they changed the position or the targets of the 'keys' because I wasn't hitting the right ones in iOS 7, usually shifted by one letter to the side but my mind sort of calibrated for the rest of the word. Then I switched between different iPhone sizes over the years, so all my experiences later were different. This still keeps happening to me but now the autocorrect on the phone gets the word I was intended to type, so it's less annoying but long gone are those days of keyboard perfection.
  • wruza 4y ago
    Yep, ios 7 was the first version where I had to become conscious of where my touch lands vs where I see my finger over the letters. It’s both amazing how they could nail it from the beginning and then allow some idiot to break it and start a spiral of “degenerative enhancements” every few years.
• Fervicus 4y ago
  I have used both iPhone and Android and the typing experience is one thing that is way better on Android in my experience.
• snowwrestler 4y ago
  When the iPhone launched, Apple talked a lot about how the typing system worked. What I remember is that it sounded like pretty simple lookups. As you typed, the software compared your word to, essentially, a weighted dictionary to guess what you were going to type next. If you typed “b” it was flummoxed. But if you typed “behav” it knew the next letter was almost certainly going to be “e” or “i” (for behavior). It may have been more complicated than that, but probably not much. It was 2007 and the phone CPU was not powerful. One interesting thing I remember is that they said the phone enlarged the touch targets for highly predicted next letters. For example it would be easier to type an “e” than a “w” after you had typed “behav”, because the tap boundary expanded around the “e”. Cool stuff! And if you did type behavw and hit space, it would autocorrect to behave. At some point I recall Apple announcing that they had switched autocorrect to a full machine learning implementation. Rather than a simple deterministic look-up, it was trained on a huge corpus of text, and reads the whole chunk of what you’ve written so far to make predictions. Everyone does this now, it’s how they deliver the (incredibly annoying and stupid IMO) one-tap suggestions for email and text replies. “Thanks!” “Noted.” “I’ll get right on that.” In my memory, that’s when typing got a lot more annoying on iPhones. The quality of suggestions went either down or weirdo or both. For example it just tried to sub-in “Quaker” for “quality” in the previous sentence. Why??
  • mathieuh 4y ago
    Do people actually send messages to each other like that? I modified all the precomposed replies on my watch to remove capitals and punctuation. Using capitals and punctuation raises the register of the message for me, and 99% of the time if I’m sending a text it’s to friends or family.
    • odysseus 4y ago
      What does "raises the register" in this context mean?
      • dopidopHN 4y ago
        Register of speak I suppose ? Formal, vulgar, technical, casual... I might be wrong English is not my first language. But that would fits nicely. I understand that as going from casual to formal, for instance.
• hakunin 4y ago
  Agree with everything, and additionally I keep getting off-by-1-key typos that I didn't have years ago. Especially (for some reason) when trying to type space or backspace.
• msie 4y ago
  Yeah this is something ive noticed too. It might have something to do with moving the touch targets on the keyboard or the machine learning has made it worse. Ive been thinking of making a kb that you can calibrate yourself.
• etrautmann 4y ago
  Yep! It’s so incredibly hard now. My error rate is extremely high and the prosperity of the iPhone to change things I’ve intended to type, and then do it three times in a row when I’m trying to force a specific word, drives me mad.
  • danrochman 4y ago
    Like when you're trying to type "propensity", and it autocorrects to "prosperity"?
    • kbelder 4y ago
      I'm continuously amazed at how many HN posters are posting from their phone. What a nightmare.
      • etrautmann 4y ago
        well, I read it on my phone... Definitely not easy to compose, or write at all though
    • etrautmann 4y ago
      haha wow....yes
• LeoPanthera 4y ago
  There's something weird going on because it seems to get worse over time, but if you do "Reset Keyboard Dictionary" then it magically gets better again, for a few weeks or so, before getting worse again. I have no idea what's going on.
• hot_gril 4y ago
  So it's not just me. I went from a 5 to a 6 to a 12 mini. My typing is horrible on the 6 or the 12. IDK if it's the screen size or what. It's not about getting used to it; it's been years for me. When I occasionally pick up the old 5, it's instantly easy for me to type again. So it's definitely the phone's fault, not mine. I'm 26 years old. However, the cursor was always impossible to control, no change there. Also, it's stupid that the new phones don't have headphone jacks, the gestures they used to replace the home button are wack, and the 5 was the perfect size. The sole reason I stopped using it was AT&T dropped support. Usability was more important than CPU/camera/whatever strength.
  • dont__panic 4y ago
    Still using my SE 2016 here for these reasons (it has the same body as the 5 and 5S). After using this phone for 5+ years, I've gotten so good at texting on it that I don't even use autocorrect! And it has a headphone jack. Something has gone horribly rotten in the space of smartphones in the last 5 years.
    • hot_gril 4y ago
      The iPhone vs Android war has cooled because after years of maturing hard/software, establishing UX, and also lock-in, most people just stick with what they know. It's not so much about the tech anymore. Apple doesn't have a visionary CEO anymore, and Android was a copy of the iPhone to begin with. Seems like both sides are less interested in giving users what they want now, or giving what they don't yet realize they want. Sometimes it's about milking the userbase, like when every big phone-maker almost simultaneously removed the jack to sell new accessories. I even feel like the push for big screens was about changing the customers' habits. But this typing issue has to just be sloppiness. The only reason I didn't get an SE 2016 is cause I had no choice. My 6 broke right before a big trip, and I needed a new phone; 12 mini is what they had.
      • dont__panic 4y ago
        Well said. I agree that big screens and aux jack removal are both anti-consumer moves where mature companies are ignoring a solid chunk of consumer needs to drive metrics. I'd add SD card slot removal to that list as well (makes it easier to up the ASP of phones, since some people need to pay more for additional storage) and the inevitable SIM card slot removal, too. The saddest thing about the SIM card slot: it removes customer choice with only one benefit for manufacturers: slightly less internal space usage. At least with the headphone jack and the SD card slot, companies were going after profit. Removing the SIM slot is just trading inconvenience for pennies.
• hackmiester 4y ago
  Try disabling slide to type. I don't use it, so if it's on, it introduces inaccuracies.
  • jibe 4y ago
    This helped my typing. Does slide to type change the target area of the keys? With it on it seems like I am hitting keys on the line below I am targeting. With it off, many fewer typos.
    • hackmiester 4y ago
      I’m not sure. I suspect that it does cause the phone to take more liberties regarding which key you “meant” to hit.
    • WastingMyTime89 4y ago
      Slide to type uses a neighbourhood rather than a key. It’s by far my favourite way of typing on a phone. After a bit of training it’s close to magical. Google implementation beats Apple however.
  • rglover 4y ago
    This fixed it for me. Wow. Been having the exact same thoughts as OP. Thank you.
  • hsshah 4y ago
    One more vote. This seems to help. Thank you for the suggestion. Now I am wondering if I should also turn off "Predictive" in the settings.
    • augustuspolius 4y ago
      I just disabled both, also disabled keyboard sound and enabled haptics. A much better typing experience!
    • _s 4y ago
      Yup - I've turned off slide and predictive and it seems to be exactly how it used to be - infinitely easier to get the words in to the point where you don't even need to look at the keyboard!
• aaur0 4y ago
  Thanks for posting this. All this while, I have thought it's my age making me do this.
• ianai 4y ago
  They need to seriously reconsider how fast interfaces change. Far too often I go to click on the right word suggested only for it to then change the word right before the click. Seems to happen in many contexts though.
• silentwanderer 4y ago
  It's not just you. I'm in my early 20's and I've noticed typing has gotten considerably worse over time. Me and my friends used to be able to text each other without looking at our phones while holding a conversation, but now it's a lot harder. I've had to rely on slide-to-type more and more instead.
  • sneak 4y ago
    The keyboards in the different iOSes are definitely of varying quality. It would be lovely to see the ios6/7 keyboard available as an installable option on modern iOS. Even with the modern regressions it’s still way better than the Graphene keyboard.
• baskethead 4y ago
  I've noticed this in the last 4-5 years or so. It's really bad, but I just put up with it. I just recently bought a Pixel 7 to see how that compares and just might switch over.
• nmfisher 4y ago
  I feel exactly the same way, but I'm getting older too, so it could be age. I doubt it, though. My phone keyboard frustrates the shit out of me, and I come to dread doing ANYTHING with it. When I had a Nokia with a hardware keyboard, I could write at 90wpm with zero typos without even looking at it. It was phenomenal. Now? Every second letter is a fat finger, auto-correct gets it wrong every other word, and it's a frustrating ordeal trying to move the cursor to exactly where I want it to fix it. It undoubtedly reduces the number of messages I send because it's such a draining experience.
• epgui 4y ago
  I turn autocorrect and all auto-complete and suggestions off. Simple UI is good. ML assist makes UI more complex.
• sidlls 4y ago
  Not just you. Typing on the iPhone has become increasingly a chore over the last few updates for me.
• guynamedloren 4y ago
  I distinctly remember being blown away by typing on an iPod touch when it first launched: it seemed almost impossible to make a mistake. The keys plus whatever other software (predictive text?) worked incredibly well. Now I’m on an SE2 and have typos constantly. I really thought it was just me, somehow.
  • mikelward 4y ago
    I had that feeling on Windows Phone years ago. Gboard on Android works pretty well most of the time though.
• augustuspolius 4y ago
  This feels odd - lately I was getting very confused by the quality of my typing on iOS. It's reaffirming to see so many people with a similar experience. I am on iPhone 13 Pro.
• jacquesc 4y ago
  I just wish I could make iOS turn off the stupid "." shortcut they attach to the spacebar. All my google searches look like "how.do i.find.a better.phone"?
  • chewxy 4y ago
    Not only iOS. MacOS too
  • tejado 4y ago
    I always thought I’m too stupid to search correctly. I have exactly the same issue.
  • SanjayMehta 4y ago
    Is Settings->General->Keyboard->"." Shortcut on?
    • quickthrower2 4y ago
      Thankyou!
    • greggman3 4y ago
      OMG!!!! I thought I was somehow actually pressing period for years! I didn't feel like I was but I never noticed I wasn't actually pressing it and it was instead auto inserting periods. WTF! Thanks!!!!
      • dereg 4y ago
        IM PRAYING THIS FIXES IT. I really cannot express how annoyed I’ve been at the search bar keyboard in Safari. This has been such a huge sticking point.
        • jacquesc 4y ago
          Sorry, it won't. Sure seems like it should though right?
    • 4y ago
• browningstreet 4y ago
  If machine learning worked, my iPhone could take a long string of letters and see that I’m invariably putting an “n” between words where a space should be and fix it for me. Typing on my iPhone is my worst daily tech experience. My worst weekly tech experience is my Amazon FireTV needing to be rebooted every time my cable internet blinks. That it can’t recover gracefully, like every other device in the house — including Amazon Echos — mystifies me.
  • selcuka 4y ago
    > Amazon FireTV needing to be rebooted every time my cable internet blinks Returned the Fire stick and purchased a CCWGTV (Chromecast with Google TV) for this very reason.
• SanjayMehta 4y ago
  Try turning Auto-Correction off and Predictive Text on. This is the closest approximation I've gotten to the original iPhone keyboard. I have Check Spelling off as well due to other reasons.
• ouid 4y ago
  relatedly, the back arrow on top of the contact card in imessage has been changed so that the region to the left of the arrow is just more contact card. I can't imagine that anyone would intentionally click there to open the contact card, and I also can't imagine that no one at apple tested the design and didn't accidentally click the contact card at least once and realize. Using phones is a bad experience.
• AnonC 4y ago
  Maybe I’ve always had issues with typing correctly and having the device provide the appropriate autocorrect suggestions on the smaller screen size (even on the 5+ inch screens). On selecting a word (single word), double tapping on the word works well for me. Same way, to select an entire paragraph, triple tap anywhere on that. There is no need to move the cursor and fumble with it for selecting these. Text selection of other kinds has a lot of issues. One thing that bothers me a lot is how it mishandles punctuation marks when selecting a sentence or multiple lines. That’s certainly a long standing bug.
• tboywixxy1 4y ago
• tboywixxy1 4y ago
• adamsiem 4y ago
  I have been thinking the EXACT same thoughts.
• hsshah 4y ago
  Same here. Been using an iPhone since 3s. Glad (not really) to see its not only me. I tried Pixel 2(?) for sometime in between and my typing accuracy / experience was better with it. With all the so-called AI/ML being used, shouldn't the typing get better?!
• unboxingelf 4y ago
  I cant type on these things worth a shit. I miss the physical keyboard of the blackberry era.
• sixstringtheory 4y ago
  I hear you. I’ve been on iPhones since the 4 and always typed with autocorrect turned off. When swipe-to-type finally came out I was stoked, but it constantly screws things up. “To” instead of “too” or vice-versa, it’s never the one I actually want (and “of” vs “off” as well, they need to work on these types of pairs), “s” instead of “a”, “o” instead of “I”, apostrophes for words I’m trying to pluralize. And while I can’t verify, my theory is that words with negative connotations are downweighted. I mean good luck ever getting an actual curse word out of it, but I’ve also noticed it with plenty of other words. ETA: selecting misspelled words to choose replacement seems completely broken to me. 99% of the time I can’t even tap it to select even though it’s underlined in red.
• riversflow 4y ago
  I’ve changed my keyboard settings and am very happy with the iPhone keyboard after readjusting. My settings: Auto Capitalization: On *Auto-Correction: Off Check Spelling: On Enable Caps Lock: On *Predictive: Off Smart Punctuation: On[1] *Slide to Type: Off Character Preview: On “.” Shortcut: On The ones with an asterisk make the biggest difference, and you may have to readjust to not having crazy touch targets. [1] I like the look of “” vs "", personally, but it’s good to know regardless that it does this because it won’t work if you are typing a sting literal, lol.
  • fd111 4y ago
    Thank you. When you make keyboard software with nine different toggle settings, most/all of which are unknown to 90% of users until they read a HN comment buried 43 pages down, you've lost the plot. :-) Didn't Apple used to promote a design principle, sometimes to a maddening extreme, of minimizing user options/settings because they were too confusing? (e.g. single-button mouse) The ios keyboard apparently adheres to an opposite philosophy.
• bartread 4y ago
  It's not you: it's got worse. My work phone was recently upgraded to an iPhone 12 and it's way worse for typing than the 6S it replaced. Lots of typos, and if you hold the phone slightly wrong you end up with it not responding because the edge of one of your fingers will be in contact with the touch sensitive area so it registers as a multitouch. I have big hands with long fingers so this is hard to avoid whilst maintaining a firm grip on the phone. Super annoying. I imagine the latter could be mitigated to some extent with a case but the phone is big enough already without bulking it up by adding a case. (I have tried cases before - not a fan at all.)
  • jdnier 4y ago
    Same phone transition for me. I keep saying "typing on my phone is the most disappointing part about living in the future." (Ok, so no flying cars yet, I can handle that, but texting on my phone is embarrassingly awful, considering phones in general are so far beyond what anyone imagined they'd be like in the 70s.)
• greggman3 4y ago
  I've never been able to type well on a smartphone well, ever. I feel like I have to correct 5 of 6 words multiple times each. For me I have noticed no change for years so iOS14->15 I noticed no difference. Same with selection. It's infuriating, has been since iPhone shipped, still bad 15 years later. Sometimes I feel like I should attach a camera to my wrist to film me trying to use it and hopefully get some popular site to show just how much poor UX I put up with every day. Unfortunately it would be hard to do, it would show private info, and it would lead nowhere.
• oxff 4y ago
  Am a long time Android user. Typing on iPhone is lot worse IMO than on Android, and I type and write a lot.
• marshray 4y ago
  Yes! I'm not alone in thinking this! I'm not crazy! (well at least not for this particular reason)
• jesprenj 4y ago
  Commas and periods are a great part of my native language (of course they are essential in many languages), yet I couldn't find a way to set up comma and period to show on my dad's new work iPhone the way they appear on Android -- on the first page of the keyboard. Pagination is required to access not only periods and commas, but also numbers and to some extent accents (čšž via press-and-hold). The mentioned cursor-to-text snapping annoys me so much that I can't use that phone to write more than a couple words, yet this entire text was written on a touch-screen phone. There exist apps to customize the keyboard, for example [0], that was recommended on reddit, but I did not test it yet. Like a lot of iPhone apps, those aren't usually free. [0] https://apps.apple.com/bb/app/unicode-pad-pro-with-keyboards/id744321889 https://apps.apple.com/bb/app/unicode-pad-pro-with-keyboards...
  • mikelward 4y ago
    I think you're supposed to press on the .?123 key, keep holding, and then slide your finger to the comma or period. I assume pressing space twice inserts a period, too. Disclaimer: it's been a while since I used an iPhone, this might be out of date.
    • frosted-flakes 4y ago
      I tried that, but half the time it would bring up the quick settings page.
• pazimzadeh 4y ago
  I am exactly in the same boat. I switched from the 12 mini to the 13 mini and I think it's a little better but maybe that's placebo.
• q-base 4y ago
  Writing on an iPhone is the only activity I have been doing rigorously day in, day out for 10+ years without getting better at it. With the old 3-press phones, I would have been invincible and able to write with the phone still in my pocket. So frustrating.
• dkaoster 4y ago
  As an android user, I thought it was just me that was unable to type on iOS, relieved to hear that I'm not alone. But also, I've noticed that typing on Android has gotten worse too as phone sizes went up. I make noticeably more typos on my >5inch pixel devices than I ever did on my <5inch nexus devices. It's still far better than iOS, but I would've expected larger screens to equal better typing experience.
• BiteCode_dev 4y ago
  In general, a lot of things calibrated for the generation of users after 2010 lost something. I assume for the keyboard, it's focusing on making it easy for the general population to express their day to day thinking, which makes sense. But if you are using more diverse words than the general population, more complicated phrasing, technical jargon, or multiple languages, the keyboard will fight you. It's also true for google search results quality, youtube suggestions, UI that electron apps expose and so on. I can clearly see I'm neither a market nor a technical target for a lot of people creating products today.
• spaceman_2020 4y ago
  I've found iPhone to be weirdly inconsistent. Like sometimes, autocorrect will recognize my name and autofill it, other times it won't. Also true with OTP recognition from text messages - sometimes it will detect automatically, sometimes it won't.
• hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
  I stopped typing altogether and use voice dictation for any messages longer than one word.
• rewgs 4y ago
  Absolutely have the same experience here and it drives me nuts.
• _blz2 4y ago
  The Swiftkey app that made typing tolerable on the iPhone is now going to be killed for iOS starting next month. So there really isn't any alternative for now.
  • Scorpiion 4y ago
    I'm not an iPhone user myself, but recently run into the fact that SwiftKey has been deprecated on iPhone when helping a friend. Does anyone here know the details of why SwiftKey was depreciated? Did iOS change their APIs or permissions somehow or what was the reason?
    • _blz2 4y ago
      Microsoft bought it years ago and essentially hasnt updated it for years. Now they're blaming iOS for canning it for good (next month). https://www.macrumors.com/2022/09/29/microsoft-kills-off-swiftkey-for-ios/ https://www.macrumors.com/2022/09/29/microsoft-kills-off-swi...
• mannyv 4y ago
  The fucking period moved.
• Double_a_92 4y ago
  For me the issue is that it learns the words I use. If I accidentally mistype and don't correct a word once, that word is forever cursed.
  • sinuhe69 4y ago
    The only way out is to reset the prediction (and lost all other useful things) :'(
• reitanqild 4y ago
  I never considered an iPhone until I could use custom keyboards. (I use swiftkey, but just type the usual way.)
• 656565656565 4y ago
  100% agree, good to know it’s not just me. I would like my 7 plus back and apple can charge me for security updates if they like
• teekert 4y ago
  I switched from Android to iOS a year ago. My first annoyance was the autocorrect, it was slightly worse, especially switching languages a lot, but what was unbearable was that iOS would often correct my last typed word AFTER I HIT SEND. That is a deadly sin imho. I've since turned autocorrect on again because I guess I'm just not precise enough, I try to always end with a space now. I still gets me every now and then though.
  • girvo 4y ago
    I wish my Android devices didn't have similar problems. They might not be quite as egregious, but they make a mess of my typing often enough to annoy me about as much as my iPhone does (which is to say: a lot). These ML-based autocorrects are terrible.
  • tremon 4y ago
    On my Android phone, words got auto-replaced with the predicted word when I hit space. It was equally maddening. Suggesting words is fine, changing what I've already typed is not.
• halotrope 4y ago
  I noticed that when the keyboard is set to the wrong language accidentally, it becomes comically bad.
• soveran 4y ago
  I've always used MessagEase (both on Android and iPhone). It is a keyboard layout that was originally designed for the Palm Pilot, and it is optimised for typing with one finger. I don't use any sort of autocompletion, yet I'm usually the fastest typist in the room. More info: http://www.exideas.com/ME/index.php http://www.exideas.com/ME/index.php
  • pshirshov 4y ago
    Yeah. It's a shame that the project is abandoned, bugs aren't being fixed and the source code isn't open.
    • kigiri 4y ago
      Yeah, I really love this keyboard, if only it was still alive, didn't find a successor
• atoav 4y ago
  I wrote half my master thesis on an android phone, and this includes peobably 20 times the master thesis in notes. The absolute best ways to write ended up being (in that order): 1. A keyboard 2. A good dual-swype keyboard app (it was keymonk at the time) 3. Actual typing without any autocorrect for anything where the dictionary failed, which in a master thesis can be a lot The physical keyboard is still the best, but it is hard to use it in the rain on a bus stop.
• wodenokoto 4y ago
  I think it’s overall better. I particularly like how autocorrections are presented above the keyboard instead of as boxes above the words (although sometimes you get boxes). I do have some problems though. My phone thinks st (short for station or saint, I guess) is something I need to type more than “at” and will often leave me with tons of st in my sentences.
• anhner 4y ago
  I played with a friend's Pixel a few weeks ago and I was surprised by how much better the typing experience was. Especially so if you have set up multiple languages. Support for non-mainstream languages is a joke on iPhone. Even the Google keyboard for iOS is shit, but I can't blame that one on Apple. I can't justify changing my phone now, but I'm highly considering my next phone to be an Android.
• sinuhe69 4y ago
  Absolutely! Typing on the iPhone is slowly becoming a frustration, especially if you are using many languages. It was so frustrating sometimes, that I must turn off autocorrection and prediction. In the initial release of iOS13, the keyboard can even freeze for an extended period of time. The updates seemed to correct the freeze, but the prediction and autocorrection is still subpar and irritating. In the last releases, the cursor scrolling, once a hallmark of iOS got worse. On the mobile website of FB, you can't move the selection properly anymore, although it works properly on Apple's own apps, so it might be a problem FB created. The most frustrating aspect about iOS keyboard is that user can not even edit the custom dictionary, they can only reset the prediction. On the top of that, typing on the iPad is getting worse, too. I wonder what the engineers at Apple are doing all the time? :(
• nottorp 4y ago
  Not just you :) It's even worse if you use more than one language. I regularly use both Romanian and English, sometimes in the same sentence and definitely in the same chat app to different recipients. On old versions of iOS the checker eventually caved in and accepted my language mix no matter what language I had set the keyboard to. These days it's really insane. Yesterday it managed to capitalize 3 words in the middle of an all Romanian sentence with the keyboard set to RO. No idea why, neither RO nor EN capitalize anything in the middle of a sentence and I don't have a German keyboard acivated. The suggestions seem mostly useless as well. Even when it gets the language right.
• thom 4y ago
  I don’t recall any period where I could successfully type a whole sentence on an iPhone. Even this one.
• lumenwrites 4y ago
  Wow, thank you for posting this, I was just thinking this! Most people here focus on autocorrect, which isn't such a big problem for me since I'm used to having it off. But what the hell is wrong with the cursor placement? It is so incredibly broken, it has a mind of its own, and never goes to where I mean to put it. Simply tapping on text puts it in the wrong places, but holding and dragging cursor or holding and dragging on the spacebar to move it also works terribly, somehow it never does what I need it to. Selecting text is just as terrible. It's also impossible to put the cursor in the middle of a word. WHY NOT? Just put the cursor where I tap! It is so easy to do on Android. I find it much easier to type and move cursor on my Galaxy S9 than on my iPad mini, despite the iPad having a much bigger screen.
  • shaoonb 4y ago
    Tap and hold on the space bar to get something akin to a trackpad to move the caret around.
    • ris58h 4y ago
      They already have mentioned it. > holding and dragging on the spacebar to move it also works terribly
    • fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago
      The thing I can never figure out how to do is move the cursor very far, eg to the other end of a url in the address bar. Spacebar trick only moves the cursor so far. That’s mostly only useful if the text field has word wrap because you can move it up and down.
      • girvo 4y ago
        Oh wow you're right: trying to go to the far right of a URL bar is horrifically bad.
        • 3np 4y ago
          I find far left of an already typed URL even worse.
• anontrot 4y ago
  I haven’t used a better keyboard than the one on Windows Phones. Currently am on iPhone
• junon 4y ago
  Android too. It was about 8-9 years ago that typing started to feel worse.
• julienreszka 4y ago
  The text selection on iPhone is very bad indeed. I have an iPhone only so I can relate to the users, but I use my android most as a main phone because the UX of the iPhone is so bad.
• dorkwood 4y ago
  The SE was the best phone I ever had, and even though the screen was smaller, I rarely made typos. Copying and pasting text was a breeze. I can't even tell how I'm supposed to select text correctly on my new iPhone. I think I need to look up a YouTube tutorial.
• cientifico 4y ago
  Thanks for your comment. I really thought I was getting older to the point of only writing messages in the computer.
• qprofyeh 4y ago
  Oh how I miss force/3d touch. With it, the spacebar trick worked on the entire keyboard, and even text selection was possible by pressing harder to start/stop selection.
• devoutsalsa 4y ago
  I have a really, really stupid question. Have you gained weight are your fingers are simply bigger? I have huge fingers and typing on any phone involves a lot of "that is not the key I pressed!"
• kleiba 4y ago
  You're most definitely getting older, but no reason to worry - most people are.
• nickrubin 4y ago
  Same experience here. I actually thought this was a me problem and not an iPhone problem. I figured I was just getting lazy and had become too reliant on autocorrect to clean up my mistakes over the years. I do notice that I tend to type much faster than I did 5-10 years ago. If I deliberately slow myself down like 30% I'm able to type almost flawlessly. Does this resonate with anyone else?
• tluyben2 4y ago
  It indeed seems to worse. The cursor placement sometimes even seems to hang my phone for a few seconds (it gets hotter for sure). Also, I almost never intend to say ‘duck’.
• tomashubelbauer 4y ago
  I use SwiftKey. I was skeptical about swipe typing at first, but it has completely won me over. I would struggle going back to regular typing now. I am often communicating in two different languages at the same time and SwiftKey can handle suggestions without breaking a sweat. Apple has come out with their own swipe keyboard and I gave it a shot, but it is nowhere near good enough. Specifically, the dual language suggestions are essentially non-existent and as far as I remember, the current language of typing was relatively front and center on the keyboard (there was a dropdown button to switch languages) instead of something the keyboard picks up from context like SwiftKey does. It also felt kind of ugly compared to SwiftKey. But since Apple came out with their own swipe keyboard and as of recent I've read some articles about them planning to nerf the 3rd party keyboard APIs, I expect SwiftKey will pack up shop at some point. I just hope by that time the Apple swipe keyboard is usable, because I'll get arthritis from the regular keyboard with the amount of retyping one has to do while using it.
  • specialist 4y ago
    I installed SwiftKey a few months ago. Seems nice. Alas, as of 2022/10/05 it's no longer avail for iOS. https://9to5mac.com/2022/09/28/microsoft-swiftkey-delisted-app-store/ https://9to5mac.com/2022/09/28/microsoft-swiftkey-delisted-a... Aside, how is a virtual keyboard startup worth $250m? Acquihire? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_SwiftKey#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_SwiftKey#History (I just don't understand this game.)
  • DavideNL 4y ago
    Using SwiftKey also, it's the best solution (i found) at the moment. A shame Microsoft removed it from the AppStore this month. Whenever people need to reinstall their iPhones, they can no longer download and install it, and future iOS updates might kill it too. Hopefully some other app will fill the gap soon :'(
  • Ecio78 4y ago
    I use SwiftKey (but without swipe) on both Android and iPhone. Now that MS is retiring it I am not sure what I will do when I switch iPhone (fortunately I have just upgraded to 14 a couple of months ago so for few years I should be fine..)
• em1sar 4y ago
• dusted 4y ago
  in a few generations, phones won't have keyboards anymore, "you don't need that, we'll show you what you need to see"
• minerva23 4y ago
  Hard agree. One of my biggest pet peeves is how the iPhone will correctly guess a swiped word and then change the prior word to an incorrect guess when the next word is swiped. Now you have to look at both the word that was just guessed and the word immediately preceding it.
• simondotau 4y ago
  [Typed on an iPhone] I think this may be false memories. The iPhone keyboard was utterly miraculous back in 2008 and was improved upon with software revisions and larger screens. I really think that 14 years later we’ve all forgotten how magical it is that capacitive touch keyboards work as well as they do. Now that we no longer see it as magic we have less patience for it whenever it does the wrong thing. As far as I can tell, typing on it right now, the current keyboard seems to me as good as it has ever been.
• silv3rback 4y ago
  I use fleksy keyboard. Everything is easier that way.
  • oplante 4y ago
    thanks for sharing Fleksy !
• BowBun 4y ago
  Yup, same here and I'm on Android. I'm in my late-twenties and have spent most of my life on mobile devices and keyboards like most people here. Over the last couple of years I've been getting frustrated to no end by the exact things you're talking about. I always have to retype words, basic things get auto-corrected to capitalized, proper noun versions that make no sense in context, etc. I'm starting to think that the older folks that dictate their text via microphone have the right idea.
• eastbound 4y ago
  The iPhone tries to guess where you want to place the cursor, because surely if you press somewhere, it’s not what you meant. Being able to force-press anywhere on the keyboard to move the cursor with precision, was replaced with force-press on the spacebar only. Awful idea, because then you can only move half-a-line down and half-a-word left and right. But we get the “swipe an entire word” keyboard that Android had too, and it is nice.
• dustedcodes 4y ago
  Auto-correct is the enemy of multi linguals. It's near impossible to chat with my friends in a language different to my phone's primary language.
• drakonka 4y ago
  I've felt this way for a really long time with touchscreen keyboards in general. I'm pretty sure I'd be overall faster when taking into account accuracy with my old 9-button dumb phone and no autocorrect. I used to be _really_ fast typing on those things, and could do so without looking at the screen to make sure my fingers were going where I thought they were. I had actually considered trying to find an Android phone featuring physical buttons (9 buttons, not a full keyboard) for this reason.
• MattDemers 4y ago
  I've just had this bug where my volume for typing tones goes WAY UP HIGH for a couple seconds before normalizing to where it should be; it happens surprisingly often, as well as general lag.
• Jack_rando_fang 4y ago
  Mobile typing experience IS terrible for anything other than routine work IMO. The fact that your keyboard takes up half of your already small screen space and that you'll have to look at your keyboard to type is a massive inhibitant for productivity. Not to mention the constant autocorrecting if you are doing any industry-specific work.
  • saurik 4y ago
    > The fact ... that you'll have to look at your keyboard to type is a massive inhibitant for productivity. I don't look at the keyboard when I type on my phone... why would you do that?! That's like assuming you have to look at the keyboard on your laptop... sure, you can, but it is much better to just practice for a bit and then stop.
• jibbit 4y ago
  I make so many typos lately that when I read back what I’ve just typed it is often gibberish. I’ve seriously wondered whether I’ve suffered from serious cognitive decline (iPhone 11 pro max)
• DrZootron 4y ago
  Strongly agree
• fergie 4y ago
  After 10 years of typing perfectly on various iPhones, I suddenly started mistyping frequently a year or so(?) ago. I feel like its actually the phone and not me that has changed. Are there any Apple people here who can give a definitive answer?
• wruza 4y ago
  I noticed it too. Somehow, typing on earlier iOS-es produced much less mistakes. I also remember some version where it broke substantially, and I realized that just over a week or so (well, another explanation is I got old that week). Now it’s unbearable and I often leave my typos in chats as is, giving up after 2-3 attempts, or immediately because I foresee the struggle. I also tried an android phone (and gboard on ios). Same shitty input, but better correction, especially for qwerty-typos. Sadly, the board itself feels like shit and I returned to apple one, plus I don’t trust google to handle my input pii/ads-wise. Another apple keyboard quirk is that it is stubborn for the first letter of a word. E.g. if I type fouble, at no time it will suggest double. Fou -> For, foubl -> found, ends up with foible. These letters are not even close, what were they or their NN thinking? “Double” is a simplest, qwerty-levenstein-nearest word for this input. I don’t even know what foible means. Since that change I began to pay attention to first letters, otherwise my text turns into complete gibberish.
• blacklion 4y ago
  My wife migrated from Android Device (Sony XZ2 Compact) to iPhone 13 Mini (because it was impossible to buy small but fast Android device when Sony was drown in torrential rain) a 6 months ago. Every out friend with iPhone said: "You'll accommodate to iPhone/Android difference fast, and everything will be Ok". Now, after half a year, almost everything is Ok, but not typing, editing text and interacting with text fields. She is screaming and shouting and sometimes crying when she need to type substantial comment on Facebook or big message in Telegram.
• f1refly 4y ago
  I've used android phones since I've had modern smartphones and I've had a similar experience. The built in keyboard by google/aosp was always flaky and, especially on small screens, a pain to use. I'll describe my keyboard journey and what ups and owns I experienced on android here: After using the built in keyboard for a while came swipe-typing and it was a lot better, but still limiting. To this day I believe that swipe-typing still hasn't reached its full potential, but the keyboards that focused on it seem to gravitate back towards hybrid regular typing and swiping which in my opinion removes many advantages it had before, making continuous use somewhat awkward. The next step in my keyboard journey was fleksy. Fleksy was built much like the apple keyboard, in that the keyboard would look where exactly you pressed (not only the key you actually hit) and try to correlate the most likely word from that, powered by a a personal word frequency statistic lookup. It worked so well that they introduced an "invisible keyboard" mode which did exactly what it said on the box, and even without visible keyboard it would work almost perfectly, that's how good their system was. The other controls where designed around their algorithm, it was highly encouraged to, instead of correct something inside of a word, just delete everything and re-write, much like you'd do on a computer where it's much faster to just ^w^w^w^w then to go back and correct that one letter. In addition, they had gestures to cycle through the other likely predicted words their engine determined from your touches. Unfortunately, fleksy had trouble raking in money and so the nice thing they had went the way every piece of venture capital software goes, which is down the drain. They began adding ever more things that began nagging away at their core competency until at some point they ventured to a joint ios/android app, a total rewrite. At that point they also introduced machine learning and made away with their previous engine, lowering the prediction quality noticably. It was at that point that I decided to switch to another app and went f-droid only, because if fleksy would've been free software I could've just taken the source and maintain it myself whenever google decided to break an api it uses. Currently I use florisboard, a fork of the aosp keyboard with some changes like the swipe behaviour of the space bar and selective deletion using backspace swiping. It's not fancy, typing hurts sometimes, but at least it doesn't try to be smart. Software that tries to be smart and fails is much worse than software that doesn't try.
• schnitzelstoat 4y ago
  Wow, I was thinking the exact same thing as I recently switched from an ancient Pixel 2 XL to an iPhone 12. I thought it was just me...
• moonchild 4y ago
  The only phone keyboard that I've ever been able to tolerate is microsoft wordflow. They discontinued it, and for $reasons (who knows...) it appears to no longer work on recent versions of ios. The apple keyboard is consistently mediocre, however.
• simon83 4y ago
  Oh wow and I thought I'm going crazy, because I also make so many typos when typing on my iPhone 11 (normal size)! On any other Android phone I don't make nearly as many typos, and it just feels so much better. I never understood why, maybe the "hitbox" on the iOS keyboard keys is just smaller? Because I could swear I'm tapping the right key but somehow it often triggers a neighboring key. Also agree with the horrible cursor movement and text selection, it is wack af on iOS
• throwaway378037 4y ago
  It has gotten far, far worse in my experience
• rpgbr 4y ago
  I miss 3D Touch so much, if only because of its awesome cursor placement trick — instead of the spacebar, you could hold a finger anywhere on the keyboard and take the cursor to the right spot, plus increase the strength to select words.
• EDEdDNEdDYFaN 4y ago
  One thing I haven't seen mentioned in the comments is that putting a phone case on the later generations of iPhones messes with the accuracy of the touch sensation of the screen. This inevitably leads to even more typo issues because you hit something "correctly" but the input is recognized incorrectly. Not sure if this impacts Android but definitely changed with iPhones https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/1822/how-can-i-recalibrate-the-touchscreen-on-my-iphone https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/1822/how-can-i-rec...
• donohoe 4y ago
  Am just here to agree with you on iPhone SE. Also using 12 Mini now.
• smcl 4y ago
  It's autocorrect that kills me - feels like they've got a boolean check[0] backwards, because my iPhone is constantly switching its/it's, well/we'll, ill/I'll and others to the wrong version. [0] - obviously there's no such code for autocorrect, I imagine it's just some AI soup now
  • justanorherhack 4y ago
    Ill as in sick?
    • smcl 4y ago
      Yep so something like "Yesterday I was ill" would get changed to "Yesterday I was I'll" - it's not the end of the world, but it's definitely annoying.
• Maxburn 4y ago
  This post inspired me to at least try turning off auto correction. I feel like it is fighting me at times and now I intend to find out if it ever really helped me and I didn't notice it. I wonder if the default slide to type being ON has any bearing on this? Turning auto capitalization off too, that I definitely fight with and it rarely makes a difference.
• EvanAnderson 4y ago
  I was using an iOS 6 device as a daily driver until April, 2022, then moved to iOS 15. The typing experience on iOS 6, and cursor placement/word selection, is so much better than iOS 15. I hate typing on my iOS 15 device. The whole “hold the spacebar” mechanic is inferior to how cursor positioning worked in earlier versions. (I had a short stint using a “burner” Android phone back in September and that did make me pine for iOS. Even iOS 15’s keyboard was better than whatever Android version that phone was using.)
• cpdean 4y ago
  i can’t for the life of me reason why the changes to auto correct were ever seen as useful. that it changes a word you’ve typed two words ago (so it’s outside of your attention by the time you’re focused on getting the most recent word correct) is baffling. Additionally, by designing it this way you’re guaranteed to only notice when this feature fucks up. If you typed the wrong word and moved on, you never notice. If you typed the right word and moved on, you see auto correct has fucked up after you send the message, or as it’s fucking up because you’ve learned to not trust the keyboard anymore so now you’re constantly rereading the last few words as you’re typing. Really a shame they put effort into a feature that’s designed to frustrate the user in this way.
• Yizahi 4y ago
  I honestly have no idea how people tolerate iOS keyboard. No numbers? No common characters? In 2022? Really? I often contemplate switching to iPhone to get away from Google, I've previously used 3GS and 4S for multiple years. But the keyboard is definitely in the top3 negative factors keeping me from it. PS: I can't judge modern iOS autocomplete, but on Android it's a complete garbage. Simple typos when I press a nearby key are NEVER autoreplaced. Typos like - r4ady or hscker or ma ufacture etc. It seems to me it shouldn't be to hard to make an algo looking for all valid words checking each letter for replacing it with a 6 surrounding keys on a typical US keyboard and looking them in dictionary. But nope, no luck.
  • Yizahi 4y ago
    For example: hscker 1) - yscker,uscker,jscker,nscker,bscker,gscker - 0 dictionary words 2) - hacker,hwcker,hecker,hdcker,hxcker,hzcker - 1 actual word "hacker" 3) - hsxker,hsdker,hsfker,hsvker,hs ker - 0 words 4) - hscjer,hscier,hscoer,hscler,hsc,er,hscmer - 0 words 5) - hsckwr,hsck3r,hsck4r,hsckrr,hsckdr,hscksr - 0 words 6) - hsckee,hscke4,hscke5,hscket,hsckef,hscked - 0 words Super simple autoreplace, map one time all groups of 6 keys surrounding each key, then write a query to lookup results in the dictionary and you're set. But nope. Too hard for a trillion dollar corp.
  • aembleton 4y ago
    Can't you install a different keyboard such as SwiftKey?
    • Yizahi 4y ago
      I don't know. I thought Apple didn't allow anything core functionality from 3rd parties, like browsers, UI skins etc.? Currently I'm interacting with iPhones only when I need to fix something on my friends iPhone, I'll check alt keyboards next time.
• tengwar2 4y ago
  I've been getting a lot more problems with typos, even on second or third attempt. I'm inclined to blame the OS for that as I'm pretty careful when I do the corrections. I haven't found the experience getting worse in other respects, but I don't like it at the best of times.
• ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  The new keyboard that just came out sucks. I prefer the iPad keyboard (I use both an iPhone Mini, and an iPad Mini).
• dadof4 4y ago
  If you think the autocorrect and text manipulation is bad on the standard iOS keyboard, you should try typing with the Grammarly keyboard. The autocorrect and cursor navigation is horrible. You may have better grammar, but the words are a garbled mess that don't have suggestions.
• UI_at_80x24 4y ago
  I do not own an iphone, but what you are describing sounds similar to what happens when the touch/screen calibration is off.
• Terretta 4y ago
  Best response here is disable slide to type and maybe predictive text: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33257455 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33257455 Another approach is to murmur to your phone -- the voice to text has gotten remarkably sound. I see lots of people press the Siri button and literally murmur sotto voce, texting paragraphs impeccably much faster than typing.
• ergonaught 4y ago
  I used to be able to type quickly and successfully on iPhones without even looking at what I was typing (I’ve had them since they released and in most sizes), but that’s not been the case for at least two years. It’s bad enough I am beginning to abandon the iPhone for almost all purposes. Maybe it’s me, or my age, but no you are not alone.
• kup0 4y ago
  I always seem to hit the period key when I am in Safari somehow when I'm intending to hit the spacebar. I have now turned off slide-to-type and curious to see it that helps fix that... also disabling the " . shortcut " setting too
• williamcotton 4y ago
  My thumbs are still used to the wider space bar and I am constantly inserting a period in its place!
• deeblering4 4y ago
  Actually yes. I’ve always left autocorrect off, but I do find myself having more typos than before lately. Can’t put my finger on when specifically I noticed though.
• fdkz 4y ago
  For me the biggest problem is that the registered letter is not the letter that was hit by the finger, but the letter that the finger was lifted up from. Slide-to-type is off.
• bigtex 4y ago
  Does anyone else accidentally hit the Return key too often while typing? I feel like the space bar should be longer on the right side.
  • bombcar 4y ago
    I type way too many periods and hit return too often. Space bar should be bigger.
• effnorwood 4y ago
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• segmondy 4y ago
  too much data. I have an android phone and swiping constantly produces the wrong words unless I swipe very slowly. it was great many years ago, i noticed that a lot of the words it suggests are words other people might be using. so I feel they are training it with dataset from a large swat of users and that's the issue. if they limited it to the most common words in dictionary then words you typed, it would be great. I suspect this is how the original worked but they got the idea to make it better by training it with "all the words"
• dpkirchner 4y ago
  You're getting older and keyboards are getting worse. I would love to see videos of Tim Cook typing on his iPhone. Like with a camera recording his fingers tapping/swiping and the screen itself, side by side. I wonder if he gets frustrated with the poor quality or if he's received some Official Training that lets him make effective use of the keyboard.
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• betwixthewires 4y ago
  No, and it's not just iPhone. The same class of problems is present on Android as well. It's because they keep getting ideas, want to make things more complicated and need to justify budgets. IMO mobile keyboards (and in general mobile input and UI in general) were a solved problem 5 years ago and should've gone into maintenance mode.
• ignite 4y ago
  It seems to now do multiword correction - that is, it will change two words instead of just the current word. This leads to major meaning shifts when it autocorrects, leading to confused recipients.
• warrenm 4y ago
  Autocorrect has always been problematic - there are loads of websites devoted to such fails [0] You've got three basic options: - disable autocorrect and see just how bad a typist you really are (related: setup your own autocorrect shortcuts) - use a different keyboard (Grammarly is one popular choice (though I don't use it anymore on mobile...I too often use my phone where LTE is spotty)) - type slower to not plow past the autocorrect options ----------- [0] https://www.qwant.com/?q=autocorrect+fail https://www.qwant.com/?q=autocorrect+fail
• PilotJeff 4y ago
  Something absolutely has changed in the last couple of iOS major releases. I have noticed it as well around iOS 14 or so. I also feel like Siri (voice recognition for dictation of messages, etc) has deteriorated as well. It is getting to the point where I am considering moving to Android just based on my experience with that.
• bilboa 4y ago
  It's the opposite for me. Typing seems to have gotten easier. Especially now that Apple added their own swype-like functionality, I've found I'm more willing to type longer pieces of text on the phone, where I previously would have waited until I could type it on a computer.
• Gertig 4y ago
  I have completely been feeling the same thing, but for me it's been more pronounced on iOS 16. Also, iOS 16's change in dictation UX is quite frustrating given I was trained that it would stop listening after long pauses and it no longer does that.
• BWStearns 4y ago
  If you have two or more language keyboards it gets even worse. If you have the French keyboard installed you basically can't use English words that start with Q. Ffs, I get it if I type "Q" for the first letter of a text field and it suggests "Qu'est-ce". But, if I'm using the English keyboard and I say "Where in Q[ueens]?" and it jumps to French on the Q that's just ridiculous.
• __exit__ 4y ago
  Having the same issue now after coming back to an iPhone after several years. Last time I used an iPhone there was Swiftkey, which was amazing. Now, that seems to be gone from the App Store (not available in my country at least) and I am stuck with the default which is quite crappy, honestly. Also, keys are too small for my fingers, so frustration keeps adding up.
• robomartin 4y ago
  For me the old BlackBerry phones with their mini QWERTY keyboard was the peak in text entry usability. Touch screen keyboards are horrible.
• thehappypm 4y ago
  I turned off autocorrect and it forced me to be a much more accurate typist.
• K0balt 4y ago
  What baffles me is the text selection/cursor placement is either absolutely garbage or cryptic to use. Also, why are the android based solutions so much vastly superior? Often a simple one letter misspelling completely flummoxes the iPhone keyboard. I never encountered that on my android keyboard. This is the number one item that pushes me back towards android. I type a lot on my phone.
• logicalmonster 4y ago
  Besides software changes, I'd look at the hardware. The newer iPhones are all too big for many peoples' hands. I thought that the iPhone 4S size was just about perfection: it felt like I could easily reach every single spot on the screen while holding the device with one hand and not straining. Everything since then has felt much harder to comfortably type and control while using. And unfortunately, I think it might be very easy for the market to misread the sales data and think that many customers continuously want bigger and bigger screens. If the only size options available are all too big, then it makes some sense to just optimize for a better gaming/movie experience if the typing experience is going to suck no matter what so many people might just end up buying the biggest phones even though they want a much smaller one. Give me an iPhone 4S sized iPhone with a modern camera, processor, and screen, and I'd be perfectly happy with that experience.
• mbrochh 4y ago
  The most infuriating thing is trying to select text for copying and pasting it into text fields. Both actions never work as expected.
• tenderfault 4y ago
  I own an iPhone 12 mini since its inception and I am 44 years old. You described exactly my problems. Somewhere on the road something broke, either me or the user interface. Also, the most painful breaking change for me is the fact that in safari the url bar is placed at the bottom since a while but I keep looking after it at the top of the screen while I type, even if there's nothing there, just something that resembles a dynamic dropdown list based on whatever I think I type. My brain can't seem to be able to accept and memorize the fact that the url bar was moved at the bottom, just above the keyboard.
  • guims767 4y ago
    I recently found out that you can move it back to the top by pressing the two little AA on the left of the URL bar, then hit "Show Top Address Bar".
    • tenderfault 4y ago
      god dammit. thank you.
  • bkishan 4y ago
    You can move the URL bar back to top like the previous comment mentions, but if you do you will miss out on the nice swipe gestures on the url bar to switch tabs or open new ones.
• techsin101 4y ago
  Just today I was telling my mom to not get iPhone for next phone if I can’t figure it out I don’t want to think what will happen to her… select a word? No.. place a cursor in a particular place? No.. double tap to select everything? No…
• dustymcp 4y ago
  I turned off auto correct and just use the keyboard, its so much better..
• arcus80 4y ago
  It’s not just you. They keep making changes that aren’t intuitive or wanted and never revert them. Gboard is pretty much the same. Things like guessing proper names even if I didn’t touch the shift bar and with the iPhone keyboard I absolutely hate that it changes words I’ve finished swiping even though I have autocorrect off. It spends more time trying to guess what I meant than the letters I manually type or glide type either way. Don’t even get me started on text selection on here. I miss good old Swype so much. I guess if you can’t beat them, then buy them out and shut them down. I keep swearing that I’m going to Velcro one of those small Bluetooth handheld keyboards on the back of my phone case.
• cpersona 4y ago
  I was wondering the same. The auto-complete seems to be purposely counterintuitive, accepting some typos for words I would never type (or don't exist) and suggesting the wrong words as well. I wondered if I was just getting old as well. One strange thing that happens is when I try to type "I", it replaces it with "ai".
• thebitstick 4y ago
  Recent iOS convert. I miss my number bar, but otherwise I find the typing experience on iOS to be great, especially on iOS 16. Just disable autocorrect.
• nvarsj 4y ago
  iOS text entry and manipulation has always been a disaster in my opinion. It didn’t even have basic copy and paste for many generations. And now, text selection is nonsensical, and prediction is also similarly awful. I still prefer to use an iPhone overall but this is one area where Android has always been superior I think.
• tobiasbischoff 4y ago
  Nah the typing on the iPhone ist really bad, the predictions are total crap. Android text entering is so so much better - unbelievable
• 1290cc 4y ago
  Thank you for sharing, I've had similar frustrations since the iPhone 11. The only constant I've been able to compare against is that my keyboard typing has not declined in accuracy.
• hackburg 4y ago