Typing on Google keyboard is challenging. My finger is too fat to easily reposition my text pointer (the green tear drop thing). Selecting more than one word of text to copy is hit and miss. I have learned to copy/paste a single word. Selecting a sentence? I screw up.
Any life hacks to make this less of a hassle?
Tapatalk doesn’t allow me to edit. (Can’t find a way) so my posts lately have typos.
Apparently the recent Google keyboard update gave us the teardrop pointer.
Up until recently it was a round dot the size of a pinhead. Nearly impossible to accurately use with fat fingers.
The teardrop is much easier. But this tiny keyboard is a PITA. I’ve considered carrying a pencil and using the eraser to type.
You can pick up a stylus for maybe a couple bucks; Walgreens et al have them right near the checkouts (usually a small clear plastic display with cubbies for cables, styli, adapters, etc.) There’s a bunch of eye-catching colors along with black.
You can also get a combo stylus-clicky ballpoint pen. I’ve gotten several as free business advertising.
Also, you probably have Swype keyboard installed; if not, it’s a free app. It lets you drag your finger along the screen to the letters you want. It’ll show you the word it thinks you want, along with a list of other possible words. If it guessed the right word, just lift your finger and start swiping your next word. If the right word is one of the other suggestions, just tap on that word and start your next word. If the word you want isn’t in the list, then you’ll have to manually type it out. BUT it’s pretty good at learning words and adapting to your typing/swiping style.
So for the word “phone”, I’d put my finger on the ‘p’ key, then lightly move my finger down a bit and to the left, then back up and to the right, then down to the ‘n’, then up to the ‘e’. ‘Phone’ is the word my keyboard will default to, but it also lists words like one, love, poker, pone, pine, etc.
I’ll install Swype and try it.
Didn’t know they sold stylus but that sounds better than a pencil eraser.
Smart phones are still new to me. But I’m learning quickly.
Google keyboard has Swype-style typing capability, you just have to turn it on. My best suggestion would be to not do what I see people doing all the time: typing with the phone held vertically when they have two free hands and could be typing on a much larger, horizontal keyboard. It’s sort of the same thing as how people tend to take vertical pics/vids with their phone by default, instead of the much better landscape mode.
But swyping is faster on a vertical keyboard. I ordered a dozen styli as an amazon add on to an order. They’re about 1.5" long and they have a plug to go in the earphone jack of my phone and kindle. I have one stashed in my desk, one in the basket with the tv remotes, one in my car’s console, etc. so that I’ve got a stylus everywhere I need one.
This. When I had an iPhone I could hold it in landscape mode and type with both of my thumbs. My Android phone is larger and it was too hard to adapt my typing style, so I started using the swipe function on the phone. It’s mostly accurate, but still makes the occasional glitch. But it’s still faster than typing one letter and lifting my finger away for the next one.
Missed the damn edit window:
Also, when you’re typing, if you hold your finger on the space bar, you will see the line you’re on with the cursor appear directly over the keys. You can slide your finger along the space bar and the cursor will follow along. You can reposition it easily that way.
Swype is wonderful. It makes typing so much easier. It’s got a built in autocorrect and it learns as you use it more. If it doesn’t recognize a word when you Swype (autocorrecting fuck to duck lol) you just tap in the letters one by one and then push space. It’ll say Huh I don’t know that word, should I add fuck to the dictionary? And you go, fuck yeah. And after a while it’ll get to the point, like with me, if I actually DO swype ‘duck’ it automatically assumes I’m typing ‘fuck’ like always and corrects it lol