As for the underlying issue, I have experienced similar typing issues on my iPhone in recent months. It feels like someone changed the keyboard to optimize for some typing behavior that doesn't match my own, so the "optimizations" work against me. It's reminiscent of when the US Air Force redesigned their cockpits to match pilots' average measurements, only to discover that using averages just made the cockpits bad for everybody.[1]
[1] https://noblestatman.com/uploads/6/6/7/3/66731677/cockpit.fl...
Folks can thumb their noses at Reddit but the top comment in every post about iOS updates since 26.0 was released is some variation of "fix the keyboard." The problem seems very real for a lot of users.
… is not being able to paste into an empty box unless I type a letter there and select it/clobber it/overwrite it
And I just LOOOOOVE not being able to tap a URL in safari and get to the end of it to add parameters or change a path anymore…
Just gave my MacBook that hasn’t been turned on in months away(i haaaaate Tahoe) and been using GrapheneOS on a pixel 7a.
so far I’m not in love with it but I’m getting used to it and starting to like downloading apps anonymously (if I name the app, I’ll probably get scolded) anyway this might be the end of the line for me and Apple.
If it's 1st or 2nd, then it's ok.
Example but the issue not limited to web browsing; Safari will do nothing, I tap again, it does the thing, then it does the thing again due to the second tap. I have to tap back to get to where I really wanted to go.
I remember seeing the videos about cpu usage spiking over 40% just to show the control center.
And similarly, even on a Mac I find myself clicking on links and button multiple times, just for things to work. It has a dedicated keyboard, how is it that they messed it up so much that a physical keyboard stops working. It's an interrupt based interface, it takes less than a millisecond to process things, how can someone mess things up so freaking stupidly.
It's kind of a paradox, but in many cases you need to actually discard touch inputs until your UI state has transitioned as a result of previous inputs. This gets extremely nuanced and it's hard to write straightforward rules about when you should and shouldn't do this. Some situations I can think of:
- Navigation: User taps a button that pushes a screen on your nav stack. You need to discard or prevent inputs while the transition animation is happening, otherwise you can push multiple copies of that screen.
- Async tasks: User taps a button that kicks off an HTTP request or similar, and you need to wait on the result before doing something else like navigation or entering some other state. Absolutely you will need to prevent inputs that would submit that request twice. You will also need some idempotency in your API design to handle failure/retries. A fun example from the 1990s is the "are you sure you want to make this POST request again" dialog that Web browsers still show by default.
- Typing: You should never discard keystrokes that insert/delete characters while a text input field is focused, but you may have to handle a state like the above if "Enter" (or whatever "done" button is displayed in the case of a software keyboard) does something like submit a form or do navigation.
Essentially we're all still riding on stuff that the original Mac OS codified in the 1980s (and some of it was stolen from Xerox, yes), so the actual interaction model of UIs is a mess of modal state that we hardly ever actually want to fully realize in code. UI is a hard problem!
Who is "they"? The employees at Apple when the HIG was first published in 1986, 40 years ago? That Apple is dead, what you see before you is an empty and rotted husk.
Introduced a concept decades ago in no way implies that their current implementation of the concept is at all ideal or market leading.
Perhaps you shouldn't encourage them. Based on recent software releases from Apple they might see it as a challenge.
For anyone curious of my experience here are my main pain points:
- autocorrect failing to correct minor mistakes
- autocorrect “correcting” a mistake with another mistake
- autocorrect “correcting” correctly typed words
- swipe to type is painfully behind Gboard (third-party keyboards are universally under-supported and inferior to Android equivalents)
- “Select All” is often hidden away
- Selecting/unselecting text in general is a pain
- keyboard seems to run out of steam after hitting a certain word count in applications such as Apple Notes or iMessage and take forever to register taps
- The Big Daddy: key taps registering incorrectly in one of two ways: 1. Clearly tapping a letter “taps” a different letter (hot spots poorly calibrated) 2. A correctly tapped letter (keyboard highlight indicates correct letter) but incorrect letter is rendered on document
Anyone irl I’ve discussed the iPhone keyboard with has described frustration so I figured this as more a “some of us are annoyed” flare than a technical manifesto.
As another commenter noted I put a tiny link to my slightly more detailed blog post once this started gaining traction but I’m just having fun here really.
Happy Friday the 13th everyone!
Be glad you only type in one language and that it is US English (probably) ;)
This sounds like a great idea, but in practice it just autocorrects incorrectly in two languages instead of one. Which is a shame, since even the German government uses a lot of Denglish these days, you'd think it would be trainable.
Meanwhile, when the chat gets stuck in the wrong language, it's a comfort to know that selecting another (or trying to press Shift for that matter) will take me to Keyboard Settings at least 80% of the time. Because who knows when you might need to change those!
Other times were not so bad.
This brings up so many emotions. I disabled autocorrect. I don't give a damn if my words are spelled wrong but they should not be words that I did not type!
I will add: text prediction was so much better before that I could be very sloppy and it would still figure it out. Now I have learned to be more careful with the keyboard.
there must be some kind of event trigger on text focus being removed or keyboard hiding that does that... ughhhh
My iPad Mini 6 sometimes gets into this state, especially after deleting something, when tapping one of the keys in the lower right corner becomes completely impossible, it always registers as this different key (I don't have the iPad nearby to check which one), and it stays broken like this until I press a few other keys. It's incredibly frustrating and it's been there since day 1.
Turning off slide to type in settings improves the situation, however it still happens.
FWIW I encounter this in Android every so often (using gboard). Anecdotally I don't know what causes it (I swear sometimes it's worse and sometimes it's better), but Android isn't entirely problem free.
Bearing in mind the amount of constant pain and torment the current best keyboards inflict upon the world, can there be any more urgent problem to tackle?
Forget climate change guys. Make a keyboard. Save the world.
- accidental periods when typing URLs in Safari
- key target inaccuracy (though turning off swipe-to-tect gas ikproved this a little, though not enough)
- key latnecy which causes letters innsome words to get swapped or extra unwated letters to appear (this could be a me-getting-older prblem, howeverg
- autocorrect suggesting words that I've never typed before (I turned on autocorrect for this list item to make sure i gave it a fair shake; it didn't suggest anything crazy this time, but the number of times it has in the past has led me to turning it off, even after iOS 18 wherein the keyboard supposedly used a small language model to improve suggestions)
I also type longform on my phone sometimes; the keyboard makes this much more exhausting than it needs to be.
- Clicks on buttons and links not registering, and needing to click multiple times, sometime to no effect.
- Safari not suggesting the website you visit multiple time a day, and points you a random website you have never visited before.
Also typed without any maual fixes. My typingwas mucu better before glass.
I've given up bothering to correct it now.
So I just search for why.is.ios.keyboard.broken and google seems to know!
Sure, I can consciously and deliberately hit the spacebar, but for a decade or more I had zero issues with causally typing and not looking.
Is it a result of moving to Pro Max sized phones? It could be, and maybe the spacebar is just now further away. I'm willing to concede it could be that.
But then there are many reports of other people with issues....
Ahhh yes, there's nothing like when autocorrect turns because into Decatur!
However, if I, as the author cared to justify that "it's not only me", I would have listed more posts and feedback. I feel like I have read at least 4 times about the broken keyboard, it should not be hard to find a few other links.
Besides, users and developers don't always use software the same way, have the same settings, follow the same forums.
Reminder: we are asking users to give us money in exchange for software.
It’s our job to deliver that working software. It’s not the user’s job to hold our hands and pep talk us into fixing problems. Users can and should find another product that will just do it for them without the whining.
I think the real point of the website, besides joking around, is poking fun at the broke state of the software industry where a bunch of whiny developers and managers will make a million tired excuses for why their software doesn’t just work.
Highlighting bug report and bureaucratic process in response to “your keyboard is jank” is exactly the mindset we need to change.
The point isn’t to start a forum or technical conversation with Apple devs. The point is to laugh at them because their software sucks and “just one more Jira ticket” isn’t going to fix it.
In the case of the iOS keyboard, I remember one bug that made the rounds (in the popular press!) after somebody recorded their typing in slow motion to validate it [0]. Once they documented it, everybody recognized the feeling and felt vindicated; but it took actual work to substantiate.
That’s the work it seems that Apple engineers should be doing. They have the telemetry, the source access, the design documents, the labs, and the time in their day to make a comprehensive study of it. Just as I can say “my car is handling funny around turns” and let it be the mechanic’s job to diagnose what’s wrong in mechanical terms.
There was a time when this humane aspect was Apple’s particular magic: engineering beyond technical requirements to the point of simplicity, ergonomics, “it just works”…
[0] https://www.macworld.com/article/2952872/heres-proof-that-th...
Do you honestly think that the developers working for apple looks at the "keyboard experience" and thinks "yeah this is good"? Of course, not. They are competent developers.
It just seems like, you could stop any iPhone user in the street and ask them "How do you find the keyboard?" And get a consistently negative response, but yet nobody within Apple seemingly has noticed for YEARS.
Everyone says iOS 26 did it, but I strongly disagree, I disabled most options in General -> Keyboard like three major iOS versions ago, and moved to Swiftkey* in iOS 18 (although iOS keeps changing my keyboard preferences back to the default).
*SwiftKey is also a shit-show with the "Your Tap Map" crap you cannot disable, where it moves the keys and makes the thing inconsistent. Just goes to show how bad Apple's keyboard is, when I'll put up with it.
Then I watched Tim Cook have trouble with tapping the screen multiple times for one action at one of the older WWDCs pre-COVID.
I felt validated and exasperated. Does Tim just put up with this?
I'm always mistyping and I don't know how to fix it to do what they want.
She has only been complaining since iOS 26, though.
It’s also not just one problem, autocorrect and the keyboard combined make for at least a dozen seemly different defects
There are some Apple folks here who keep gaslighting users with their iOS 26 concerns and every other issue by calling them weird names and asking them to not complain.
The damn keyboard is broken, one would've known that if they used it more than a few minutes a day in real life examples. Stop shutting people off and use your own damn products instead of getting them all made in China and sell them.
I see that a lot with Tesla, there's the group that praises them publicly and makes outrageous claims about self-driving... But remains strangely silent about how the windshield wipers don't work right and Tesla won't fix them.
Apple's problem is their keyboard used to "just work" as the original article says. No one knows what magic they did back then, but it's obvious that they turned it off now.
They're still better than the spell checker in MS Teams, although that's not really positive.
Anyway, I was just considering switching to android today after repeated problems with the keyboard, maps, siri and notifications / incoming calls.
They’re almost as bad as pre-iPhone Linux phones at this point.
Q: “Can it be a daily driver?”
A: “Sure, as long as you also carry a Garmin/TomTom, and a dumbphone or pager”.
Now I’m entirely invested, what was the problem causing the crashes? How did they solve it?
I want the keyboard to work the following way -- after I press the button: 1. Letter that I pressed (not a random one) appears 2. Instantly
iOS keyboard somehow fails both. I have no idea what "typing behavior" can you optimize for to end up like this
I have just switched to turning autocorrect off.
The "select all" comment hit home. I frequently try to copy/paste text and it is maddening to try to locate "select all"
And cursor movement? ugh. It is so painful to move the cursor to one specific letter that I frequently just erase everything and start over.
I use swipe keyboard in iPhone. I turned off all "autocorrect" features they offer.
Still their random generator keeps replacing perfectly fine words _and the words before them_ with random crap that makes no sense.
Heck, I even turned off all features, and still it happens.
So I switched to another keyboard from appstore.
I would switch to another OS, but I find the others even worse in some respects I care for deeply.
auto-capitalization
auto-correction
smart punctuation
That is assuming the user doesn’t first have to offer incense and whisper a fervent prayer to the Omniscient Deity of USB Devices to seize control of the mouse and click the link in divine intervention.
However for most of us that is uncessary and clicking a link to a video requires no effort at all.
I have always just suspected that it is the same as it was with the lack of t9 dialling. Everybody knew it was awful, but apple just stuck their head in the sand and asked their users to just live with it.
There are many things I dislike about iOS (most notably the settings app), but those are just intermittent annoyances but the keyboards is still so infuriatingly bad.
The reaction at work when I brought a usb keyboard to plug into my phone when I had to write something wasn't "why do you do that?". It was "I have thought about that as well. The keyboard sucks".
