The iPhone Has a Secret One-Handed Keyboard

As iPhone screens become bigger and bigger, it has made using one-handed keyboards less of a gimmick and more of a straightforward useful idea. Microsoft has a one-handed mode for its keyboard app as well as Google. Of course it comes as no surprise that Apple has one as well… however, it’s not letting customers use it. Thanks to developer Steve Troughton-Smith, he spotted the code for a one-handed keyboard in Apple’s iOS. By swiping in from either left or right of the screen, the keys shift to the opposite side, adding large cut, copy and paste buttons as well. It’s not clear why Apple never implemented this feature, especially considering the company usually does so well on iPhone accessibility. However, Troughton-Smith created a way to access the one-handed mode if your iPhone is jailbroken. Hopefully we’ll see this feature in the future. Check out the video below.

Today’s fun hack (been there since at least iOS 8); the iOS keyboard has an unused left/right one-handed mode. Activated by edge-swipe pic.twitter.com/zIk7x7CVmu

— Steve T-S (@stroughtonsmith) October 19, 2016

Video or it didn’t happen: (very hard to engage in the Simulator with a mouse cursor) pic.twitter.com/vw2wpCgiLJ

— Steve T-S (@stroughtonsmith) October 19, 2016