This simple guide will help you in familiarizing the Google Keyboard.
a. Close the keyboard
- This one is pretty easy. Always tap the Back button (next to Home button) to close or hide the virtual keyboard.
b. Upper case keys
- Tap the Up Arrow key
once to switch all the letter keys to upper case. The first letter of the next word you tap will be in uppercase, and the rest will be lowercase letters.
c. Caps lock
- Double-tap (or long tap) the Up Arrow key
to turn on caps lock. Touch the Up arrow key again to turn it off.
d. Punctuation marks
- Long tap the Full Stop key for quick access to more punctuation marks.
- Optionally, tap the ?123 key to switch the keyboard to number and punctuation keys.
e. Quick punctuation marks
- Another quick way to enter symbols or punctuation marks is to directly swipe from the ?123 key to your desired symbols/punctuation marks. This way the symbols/punctuation marks will be entered and the keyboard will automatically switch back to the letter keyboard.
f. Accented and Special characters
- You can get accented and special characters by tapping and holding some of the letter keys
g. Enter Numbers
- Instead of switching to symbol & punctuation keyboard, you can long tap the letter keys in the first row for numbers.
h. Access Google Keyboard settings
- Long tap the Comma key to see the Input options prompt.
- Select Google Keyboard Settings.
i. Change the language
- If 2 or more languages are selected in the keyboard settings, tap
to switch between the languages.
- Optionally, you can long tap the spacebar to choose the language keyboard you want.
j. Gesture typing
- Gesture typing is a method of text input which allows you to sweep on the keypad, in order to create a word. This feature is activated by default in the Google Keyboard settings > Gesture Typing.
k. Google Voice input key
Voice input key is enabled by default and it’s found above the P letter key. Simply tap it to use your voice to enter text on your device.
If you can’t find the Voice input key, go to the Google Keyboard settings > Preferences to make the Voice input key is enabled.
l. Predictive text bar
Predictive text bar shows suggested words while you’re typing. This feature is turned on by default.
If you find the bar distracting, you can follow the steps in this guide to turn it off.
m. Emoji keyboard
To make your texts even more expressive with emoji, you can long the Enter key, and then select the Smiley Face key to access to a variety of small and colorful images.
n. Translate words into emoji
Google Keyboard can bring up the associated emoji for certain words like “snowflake”, “victory”, “smile”, and etc. if you follow the steps here to enable the Emoji for English words feature.
o. Capitalization of texts
You can quickly capitalize the first alphabet of every word in a phrase, by highlighting the whole phrase, and then press the Up Arrow key on the keyboard. Simply tap the Up Arrow key one more time to switch to capitalize every alphabet.
p. A dedicated number row
You can have a dedicated number row on your Google Keyboard by using the custom PC layout. Here’s how to enable it.
q. Text shortcuts
Text shortcuts are frequently used phrases or words that you can add to the Google Keyboard’s dictionary and use custom abbreviations to call them when typing instead of having to type them out entirely. Here’s a guide to adding text shortcuts on the Google Keyboard.
r. Change the theme
Bored with the light theme of your Google Keyboard ? You can change it to something darker. Head over to the Google Keyboard settings > Appearance & layout > Theme to select a theme you want.
Sam says
Many Android versions, but all has no arrow keys in the keyboard..you have taken stupidity to new level. People complain about it since 2010 and still google is either deaf, ignorant, or sheer stupid.
Jed MacKinnon says
Links would be nice.
I would like to find out about voice input. Google is crazy to release such a thing with no manual.