Try disabling slide to type. I don't use it, so if it's on, it introduces inaccuracies.
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.
Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?
111–120 of 422 posts
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?
#112I 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.
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?
#113I’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.
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?
#114It'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.)
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?
#115When 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 m…
Sometimes I’d type out a correct spelling of a word and it’d correct it to another word that’s totally unrelated to the context of the sentence, like your Quake example. Infuriating when in a rush.
Mine throws in random French words that look like the medical words I was aiming for.
Also for a 3 month period it was auto-correcting ’thé’ to ‘teh’ - i had to train it out of it by spending around half an hour just entering and cancelling the auto correct in notepad on both my computer and phone (because they’re linked)
Edit… oh dear, it may have discovered another association I don’t want it to have
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?
#116I'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.
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?
#117Am a long time Android user. Typing on iPhone is lot worse IMO than on Android, and I type and write a lot.
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?
#118I 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"?
Is Settings->General->Keyboard->"." Shortcut on?
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!!!!
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
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.
That's amazing, I need Hacker Keyboard apparently. All the features GBoard has and they never thought to add an undo button option?
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?
#120When 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 m…
As happy as I normally would be to laugh at Apple misfortune, everything in this thread including your comment could be about Android, and it would still sound true in my experience :(