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> The soft keyboards on modern smartphones are just terrible I find it’s best to think of the iOS keyboard[0] as being a single big touch area with no distinct

> The soft keyboards on modern smartphones are just terrible I find it’s best to think of the iOS keyboard[0] as being a single big touch area with no distinct buttons, which you type into by tapping your fingers in the general vicinity of where the correct keys are, and let autocorrect do all the work. I get confused by people who disable autocorrect, because for me it’s the only way the keyboard works at all. Just as I’m typing this, fully half the words I’m typing are wrong as I’m typing them, and the phone is figuring out my actual meaning only by looking back entire sentences and figuring out the correct words by looking at probabilities. I never stop to check whether it got the word right, I just keep typing. It figures it out eventually. (Side note, when it does get it wrong, I can’t imagine a worse system for correcting words than iOS has. I simply cannot ever get the cursor to go to the right place for correction. Whatever system is being used for placing the cursor in response to inaccurate taps, is fully and diametrically opposed to how I’d expect it to work. It’s criminally bad.) - [0] probably android too, but I only have experience with iOS so that’s what I’m speaking to.

thomaskahabka 3y ago
To your side note: did you know you can use the iOS keyboards space bar as touch pad control for the text cursor? Just press and hold. That makes positioning the cursor very easy.
- natebc 3y ago
  FWIW the default soft keyboard on Android functions the same way. Remembering to use it is the big trick!
  - Tijdreiziger 3y ago
    This is true, but the UX is much nicer on iOS.
    - burntwater 3y ago
      I disagree, I find the total keyboard experience much better on Android. To each their own, obviously. But... yeah, IMO it's pretty bad on Apple.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ninkendo 3y ago
  I do, but it’s janky enough that I don’t actually like it very much, and it hasn’t achieved muscle memory status. It seemed to work better when it was Force Touch based (before they removed Force Touch)… the spacebar technique just doesn’t seem to activate reliably for me.
NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
Trying to tap where you want the cursor to go is madness - hold the space bar and drive the cursor to where you want it.
wswope 3y ago
I totally agree with your general point, but in case you haven’t tried it, disabling “Slide to type” massively improves iOS keyboard accuracy. (Picked up the tip from another thread on here about how sloppy the iOS keyboard is, and have subjectively found it to be a big improvement.)
- patrickdward 3y ago
  I thought "slide to type" was default off--and at least I was sure it was off at some point for me. But your message prompted me to check and it was on. Thanks!
arp242 3y ago
> I get confused by people who disable autocorrect I want to speak with my own voice, not Apple's autocorrect voice. Doubly so in casual jokey chats. I do agree that it's unusable without it, but I ducking hate it.
- ninkendo 3y ago
  They fixed the thing that always autocorrects away from swear words in the 2023 release FYI (maybe 2022, I can’t remember.) They made a special point of mentioning it at WWDC. I can now type “fucking” reliably without it replacing it.
  - arp242 3y ago
    Rightyho, now for all the other things, like rightyho. Or a thousand other smallish things that are hard to write the way I want to.
GrumpySloth 3y ago
If you regularly switch languages or, even worse, use multiple languages in the same messages, autocorrect gets in the way more than it helps. In monolingual contexts it’s almost always set to the wrong language (based on the one used previously) and what comes out is just a jumble. In multilingual contexts you just spend as much time on switching the keyboard language as on the actual typing. Also, I’m not sure how it is today, but 5-8 years ago I knew more words in my native language than iOS autocorrect and got tired of it “fixing” them.
- eru 3y ago
  I type on Android in English and occasionally German and rarely Spanish, and it's not too bad over there.
- Tijdreiziger 3y ago
  Android and iOS have had cross-language autocorrect for quite a while now. You don’t need to be on the ‘right’ keyboard anymore.
  - makeitdouble 3y ago
    They have the feature, sure, whether it works properly for the languages you are using is another thing altogether. Somewhat close languages (french/english) are often not great, and adding CJK with anything other than english to the mix is also a recipe for a bad experience.
    - freedomben 3y ago
      Even for just English, it gets some words wrong constantly for me. I would love to be able to watch someone type in their phone to see if I'm just using it wrong
    - Tijdreiziger 3y ago
      Well, maybe it’s just personal preference, but I use Dutch and English (a closer language pair than FR/EN) on Android and iPadOS, and it works great for me. Of course, you still need to switch for CJK languages (because they need an IME), but that’s a given.
eru 3y ago
I find the Android default keyboard a lot easier to use than the iOS one. But then, I've used Android a lot more (on the phone) and use iOS only on the tablet.
myself248 3y ago
My problem with iOS autocorrect is that when I type a technical word that it doesn't understand, as soon I hit space and it autocorrects, even if I immediately backspace, the original word is GONE. If someone was dictating something to me and I was transcribing, too bad, I have to ask them to repeat it. Android will autocorrect but if you immediately backspace, it reverts to the original. I didn't realize how much I relied on this function until it was absent.
- ninkendo 3y ago
  I generally can predict the words it isn’t going to understand, and just make an effort to type those more carefully. The literal letters you typed so far is typically the leftmost option in the word list just above the keyboard. 98% of the time I can just plow right through mashing my fingers vaguely near the keys, the other 2% I just type slow and use the top left word instead of the space bar.
  - myself248 3y ago
    > I generally can predict the words it isn’t going to understand By the time I have to anticipate the machine mis-fixing my not-mistakes, I think we're well into the-machine-is-wrong territory.
jessekv 3y ago
For me, autocorrect is just not worth it. I'd rather fix my own mistakes than supervise/fight a language model. To me, the latter takes much more effort. And once I disabled AI my typing accuracy (and spelling ability!) improved, so that it became a non-issue.

thomaskahabka 3y ago

To your side note: did you know you can use the iOS keyboards space bar as touch pad control for the text cursor? Just press and hold. That makes positioning the cursor very easy.

natebc 3y ago
FWIW the default soft keyboard on Android functions the same way. Remembering to use it is the big trick!
- Tijdreiziger 3y ago
  This is true, but the UX is much nicer on iOS.
  - burntwater 3y ago
    I disagree, I find the total keyboard experience much better on Android. To each their own, obviously. But... yeah, IMO it's pretty bad on Apple.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ninkendo 3y ago
I do, but it’s janky enough that I don’t actually like it very much, and it hasn’t achieved muscle memory status. It seemed to work better when it was Force Touch based (before they removed Force Touch)… the spacebar technique just doesn’t seem to activate reliably for me.

NovemberWhiskey 3y ago

Trying to tap where you want the cursor to go is madness - hold the space bar and drive the cursor to where you want it.

wswope 3y ago

I totally agree with your general point, but in case you haven’t tried it, disabling “Slide to type” massively improves iOS keyboard accuracy. (Picked up the tip from another thread on here about how sloppy the iOS keyboard is, and have subjectively found it to be a big improvement.)

patrickdward 3y ago
I thought "slide to type" was default off--and at least I was sure it was off at some point for me. But your message prompted me to check and it was on. Thanks!

arp242 3y ago

> I get confused by people who disable autocorrect I want to speak with my own voice, not Apple's autocorrect voice. Doubly so in casual jokey chats. I do agree that it's unusable without it, but I ducking hate it.

ninkendo 3y ago
They fixed the thing that always autocorrects away from swear words in the 2023 release FYI (maybe 2022, I can’t remember.) They made a special point of mentioning it at WWDC. I can now type “fucking” reliably without it replacing it.
- arp242 3y ago
  Rightyho, now for all the other things, like rightyho. Or a thousand other smallish things that are hard to write the way I want to.

GrumpySloth 3y ago

If you regularly switch languages or, even worse, use multiple languages in the same messages, autocorrect gets in the way more than it helps. In monolingual contexts it’s almost always set to the wrong language (based on the one used previously) and what comes out is just a jumble. In multilingual contexts you just spend as much time on switching the keyboard language as on the actual typing. Also, I’m not sure how it is today, but 5-8 years ago I knew more words in my native language than iOS autocorrect and got tired of it “fixing” them.

eru 3y ago
I type on Android in English and occasionally German and rarely Spanish, and it's not too bad over there.
Tijdreiziger 3y ago
Android and iOS have had cross-language autocorrect for quite a while now. You don’t need to be on the ‘right’ keyboard anymore.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  They have the feature, sure, whether it works properly for the languages you are using is another thing altogether. Somewhat close languages (french/english) are often not great, and adding CJK with anything other than english to the mix is also a recipe for a bad experience.
  - freedomben 3y ago
    Even for just English, it gets some words wrong constantly for me. I would love to be able to watch someone type in their phone to see if I'm just using it wrong
  - Tijdreiziger 3y ago
    Well, maybe it’s just personal preference, but I use Dutch and English (a closer language pair than FR/EN) on Android and iPadOS, and it works great for me. Of course, you still need to switch for CJK languages (because they need an IME), but that’s a given.

eru 3y ago

I find the Android default keyboard a lot easier to use than the iOS one. But then, I've used Android a lot more (on the phone) and use iOS only on the tablet.

myself248 3y ago

My problem with iOS autocorrect is that when I type a technical word that it doesn't understand, as soon I hit space and it autocorrects, even if I immediately backspace, the original word is GONE. If someone was dictating something to me and I was transcribing, too bad, I have to ask them to repeat it. Android will autocorrect but if you immediately backspace, it reverts to the original. I didn't realize how much I relied on this function until it was absent.

ninkendo 3y ago
I generally can predict the words it isn’t going to understand, and just make an effort to type those more carefully. The literal letters you typed so far is typically the leftmost option in the word list just above the keyboard. 98% of the time I can just plow right through mashing my fingers vaguely near the keys, the other 2% I just type slow and use the top left word instead of the space bar.
- myself248 3y ago
  > I generally can predict the words it isn’t going to understand By the time I have to anticipate the machine mis-fixing my not-mistakes, I think we're well into the-machine-is-wrong territory.

jessekv 3y ago

For me, autocorrect is just not worth it. I'd rather fix my own mistakes than supervise/fight a language model. To me, the latter takes much more effort. And once I disabled AI my typing accuracy (and spelling ability!) improved, so that it became a non-issue.