iOS Ships Dvorak, Finally | Hacker News Reader

iOS Ships Dvorak, Finally

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187 pointsingve136 comments

I use dvorak for my computer, but I think the design goals of QWERTY are actually useful for the small keyboard of a phone being used with thumbs.

It was designed to put diphthongs on opposite sides of the keyboard so that a mechanical typewriter wouldn’t jam as frequently. I think avoiding “jams” with my thumbs is definitely the way to think about it.

All of this is speculation because I haven’t had the chance to try it our yet ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Came here to say this! Same for me.

Well put...

Indeed, there is no gain whatsoever in adopting a keyboard that puts all the most used characters in the home row if you're just tapping with two thumbs.

A better layout for smartphones, if one had to design it, would try to put all characters in two circles around the thumbs, while putting symbols and the least frequent ones towards the centre, requiring some extension of the thumbs to reach.

The gain is probably to have a consistent layout across devices.

There is no need. It's a different type of muscle memory.

I've been learning to use a split ortholinear keyboard, and it exercises a different type of muscle memory than a regular keyboard, which is even different than on-screen keyboards. I have a different layout in each and I haven't lost any speed whatsoever.

I disagree. When for one reason or another I have to use a phone that uses qwerty I have to hunt and peck, with a large emphasis on "hunt".

I wouldn’t be so sure. I (a QWERTY user) remember picking up my first phone with a non-numeric keyboard (Nokia E63, a Symbian-based QWERTY-keyboard phone) and instantly starting typing with my thumbs virtually blindly. I expected a long learning period; there wasn’t.

I have been typing Dvorak for about 15 years, give or take (I had been typing qwerty before that). A couple of years after the switch I started to play World of Warcraft, and I thought it was too much effort to rebind all the keys (they assumed qwerty), so I just played it on qwerty. My brain quickly learned to associate the game with the keyboard layout, so I would type qwerty at full speed when chatting in-game. Typing qwerty on someone else's computer was much harder and required some conscious effort. I wonder if mentally switching between keyboard layouts is similar to switching between speaking different languages.

I have an en-Intl Macbook that I work on personal projects on, and a Swedish Macbook for work. I find that I can swap between them fairly trivially, but as soon as I open Slack on my personal machine to quickly respond to a work query I’m completely at sea.

This is an interesting anecdote. Despite a longtime interest, I've been hesitant to bother trying alternative keyboard layouts because even with only really minor changes to shortcuts (capslock replaced with ctrl, emacs text navigation bindings for all apps) typing on an unfamiliar computer is almost comically bad, but I have gotten used to specific apps that don't play nice with my bindings (I'm looking at you Github text boxes stealing ctrl+e!).

It does seem to require some mental "switch" or trick. If I look at the keyboard (assuming it's got QWERTY on the keycaps, which all of my keyboards have had), it "reminds" me to type QWERTY and I can do it. It's not really full-speed or facile but it's good enough and it's not hunt-and-peck, anyway. If I look away, I cannot type QWERTY.

I picked up dvorak over summer vacation in high school because I was having bad wrist pain. My high school wouldn't let me use dvorak, so I painfully had to re-rewire my brain for qwerty in our high school labs.

I quickly realized that my brain would use dvorak for my mechanical keyboard at home but would only use qwerty on the soft keyboards at school.

Split orthogonal isn't at all comparable to a different layout.

I don't know if it's a common feature or just part of the Samsung Keyboard app, but when the phone is rotated it does seperate they keyboard quite nicely so you can access each half with your thumbs. Space in the middle is a little wasted though.

I don't know if it's a common feature or just part of the Samsung Keyboard app, but when the phone is rotated it does seperate they keyboard quite nicely so you can access each half with your thumbs.

Available on iPads, but not on iPhones at this time.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207521

There used to be a keyboard layout designed specifically for handheld touchscreen devices called Fitaly[1]. I used this layout on my Palm Pilot back in the day.

[1] https://textware.com/fitaly/fitaly.htm

Fitaly is neat, but it's optimized for a single stylus with high precision, rather than two thumbs with low precision.

Another cool one is minuum in minimode. The prediction's so good that you just have to approximately hit the key https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.whirlscape...

One downside was that it seemed to have memory issues but this was years ago on a Samsung GS5.

Note that this also affected iPadOS where many of us have a full keyboard. It was a real pain switching between the 2 when going from computer to iPad. Thankfully, they added it to iPadOS, too, so now I don’t have to.

iPadOS has supported Dvorak for Hardware Keyboards for a long time. There's a separate picker for Hardware Keyboard Layout than Software Keyboard Layout.

Fair point, but even the on-screen keyboard on iPads is basically full-sized so it makes more sense than on a phone.

There's a Japanese smartphone layout which is really fast. It's based on the number pad.

There are 9 base consonants (K S T N H M Y R W) and 5 vowels (A I U E O), and every syllable is either vowel or consonant + vowel. Digits 0-9 on the number pad correspond with the consonants (including "no consonant"), and then you swipe in a different direction for a different vowel (4 vowels for swiping in a direction, 1 vowel for not swiping).

Nice, big chunky buttons you can press with one thumb on one hand, and each time you press one of those big, chunky buttons, you get an entire syllable. After a little bit of practice, I can type on this layout much faster than I can type in English, even though my Japanese is not very good.

I switched to this keyboard for my Wanikani reviews because I find I make fewer typos with it, but I personally find it slower than the QWERTY-based romaji input.

Words that use unvoiced, full-size kana are super fast (especially if it has a bunch of あ vowels like あたたかい, which takes 4 taps and 1 swipe instead of 8 taps in romaji), but words with lots of voiced consonants and small kana need you to tap the modifier button a bunch (e.g. ざっぴ requires seven taps+swipes, instead of just 5 taps on the romaji input).

There's also an English implementation of this same layout concept on Android and iOS called MessageEase[1]. I've been using it for almost 10 years now and have been quite happy with the support over time.

You can consistently type without looking at the keyboard once you learn the layout, which I've found to be great for note-taking

[1]: https://www.exideas.com/ME/index.php

I think this reasoning is sound. As someone who has exclusively used Dvorak on computers for decades, I currently see no reason to switch over on iOS.

Now maybe the next generation will find that Dvorak on iOS is no worse, and if they use it they can avoid learning a second layout. But for existing Dvorak users who also were forced to learn QWERTY at some point, it's hard to see many switching over.

As a former iOS engineer at Apple, and a dvorak user, I can verify that this is exactly the thinking (during my time) of why dvorak support wasn't a development priority. The properties which make it good for typing make it bad for a phone keyboard.

Was there any research into what keyboard would be the ideal phone layout (presumably something entirely new)?

Back in the Days of Yore we had something called "Fitaly", which was supposed to be optimized for pen typing: https://textware.com/fitaly/fitaly.htm

I loved Fitaly and the associated ecosystem. Palm, Handspring, the usable stylus on a 160x160 screen...

Few years ago someone posted a link on HN of a keyboard that was designed for optimum swiping, fewest overlaps and what not.

It faced the same problem as all new keyboard designs, getting people to use it.

If you are on Android, you can find plenty of research project keyboards that are indeed more efficient to use, after you get over the learning curve.

I'm surprised to hear this. It seems like the point is clearly to allow existing Dvorak (desktop) users to avoid switching formats when they switch devices. It shouldn't matter whether Dvorak is optimal for typing on a phone.

This really doesn't matter because the "muscle memory" doesn't carry between the two formats.

True. I was happy when I switched to Android because Dvorak was available as an on screen keyboard. I didn't last for more than a day with it. Dvorak is terrible for on screen typing.

Disagree. I've been almost an exclusive Dvorak user for 15+ years, and the muscle memory absolutely carries over.

The muscle memory of touch typing, by definition of muscle memory, does not carry over to thumb typing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_memory

Good point. Though a significant part of typing speed is your _spacial_ memory (where is the J key on the keyboard?).

Your _muscle_ memory makes you good at moving your fingers (or thumbs) to an absolute position on your keyboard (or screen) - but to do that you must first decide what absolute position your finger (or thumb) should move to (where is the J key?).

Yes, and as others point out iOS has long supported Dvorak (and Colemak and a few others) where that desktop muscle memory matters: when using a hardware keyboard via Bluetooth.

Qwerty is useful for "swipe typing" on a touch screen and Dvorak/Colemak is great for touch typing on hardware and the way "muscle memory" works those are such different media/muscle movements that they have separate "muscle memory".

And yet, somehow, I feel like it was a lot faster for me to learn how to type on an iPhone--nearly instant, really--because it was using QWERTY instead of having the letters in a random order, so it isn't clear to me that what you are saying matters even if it were true.

It made sense to me. Luckily, Dvorak support for hardware keyboards has been always available on iOS.

This seems like sound logic as long as iOS is only used for phones and an on-screen keyboard; but isn't it used for the iPad as well? And wouldn't a lack of Dvorak support mean you can't use it with your standard external keyboard?

I don't know, I'm not an iOS user but it would hugely inconvenience me if the only way I could use Dvorak on Android is to use a keyboard with a hardware Dvorak layout.

Edit: Indeed, it appears that iOS supports Dvorak layout for external keyboards already; this is supporting the native on-screen keyboard

> Indeed, it appears that iOS supports Dvorak layout for external keyboards already

This is a little ambiguous, I assume you mean a (rare) hardware Dvorak keyboard, not that iOS supports remapping a standard ANSI external keyboard to Dvorak - but correct me if that's wrong.

Yes, your assumption here is off - iOS supports remapping standard external keyborads to Dvorak. I’m typing this on Dvorak on my iPad with a standard Logitech keyboard connected via the Smart Connector.

That's good to know, thanks!

Oh? I thought this would be important on the phone too.

Not the home row thing, but the fact that vowels are on the left hand side, so that two thumbs will alternate as much as possible (alternating left and right hand fingers being an explicit goal of Dvorak).

I use swiping almost exclusively, and HN has discussed before how Dvorak is actually really bad for that:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7110619 , but the article is broken, so see https://web.archive.org/web/20150320170000/http://minuum.com... .

Having all the vowels next to each other, and so many words in English that differ just by vowels, is actually really hard on the swiping algorithm. As I mention in the comments of that article, it is likely that QWERTY is not optimal for that use case either, but it's a lot closer. Despite using Dvorak for almost everything else, including typing this comment right now, I have no use or desire for it on mobile phones. YMMV, of course.

A lot of different people have come up with metrics for the optimality of a given keyboard layout. This has given rise to various unusual layouts that are the optimal layout for a given metric. [1]

I wonder if the same could be done for a swipe based phone layout. Seems like you'd end up with something very different than Dvorak and probably quite different than Qwerty as well. Perhaps part of the metric could give a bonus to layouts that were similar to some other layout, thus creating Qwerty-phone and Dvorak-phone alternative layouts.

As someone who types with Dvorak on the computer, I'd happily attempt to learn a new layout for phones. My error rate is extremely high with swipe keyboards, even though I use Qwerty.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20220926205948/https://mkweb.bcg...

>I wonder if the same could be done for a swipe based phone layout.

There are others, but the one that comes to mind for smartphones and other small devices is MessagEase. [1]

They offer apps for Android, iOS and Windows. I use the Android version. I love using it although it is sometimes buggy (display gets stuck on letters/digits and you have to remember where the digit/letter you want to enter is located) and backspacing over a lot of text (instead of selecting and cutting it) is always very slow.

[1] https://www.exideas.com/ME/ICMI2003Paper.pdf

We don’t really know the design process for QWERTY but it wasn’t about avoiding mechanical jams. Avoiding mechanical jams was the reason Dvorak was invented.

QWERTY if anything seems to be about being convenient for transcribing Morse code. Letters with a similar Morse code are grouped etc.

You're right about the first part (we don't really know why QWERTY was designed the way that it was), but as far as I understand it's pretty clear that Dvorak was created to enhance typing speed and comfort, based on ergonomic principles not related to mechanical details. For example, it is designed to alternate typing between the two hands for most common letter combinations, and to have most common letters on the home row.

I've heard that that the letters for 'typewriter' all appear in the top row so a salesman could type that as a demonstration. Perhaps apocryphal.

I've been using Dvorak layout exclusively on my computers for over 20 years and I totally agree with you, QWERTY is just a better option on a phone.

Some years ago, I set up my Android phone to use Dvorak layout but I quickly reverted to QWERTY, without being able to use my muscle memory, it was actually a very frustrating experience.

Because most Dvorak users do not use a keyboard labeled with the dvorak layout, you never really learn visually where the keys are and you only know the layout in your muscle memory which does not translate at all to using a touchscreen keyboard on a phone.

But wouldn't you use Dvorak with a larger device (so that you're typing on the on-screen keyboard conventionally) or that you use with an external keyboard? I use Android devices this way and until this story it honestly didn't occur to me that iOS wouldn't support the equivalent.

Agree. I use dvorak on my laptop, and tried it on my iPhone for a couple weeks but it just didn't work. Your explanation makes sense!

I was going to say the exact same thing; to cram the fingers in a small “home row” on a touch screen makes no sense at all. But the opposite does!

I typed a long refutation of this theory before deciding to back theory up with facts by looking up a study.

https://userinterfaces.aalto.fi/typing37k/resources/Mobile_t...

> Finger usage: Participants who reported to use two fingers were significantly faster than those who used only one finger (M = 37.7, SD = 13.2 versus M = 29.2, SD = 10.7, p < 0.001, d = 0.66). A closer look at the reported typing posture shows that the use of different hands and fingers had a significant impact on performance. Over 82% of participants typed using two thumbs. Confirming the findings of prior work [3 , 7], this was the fastest way to enter text

Turns out I'm weird it seems you should and indeed most people do use two thumbs. Given that fact your theory seems extremely plausible.

I'm surprised the conversation here is focused on whether Dvorak is useful on mobile (with - unsurpisingly - many differing opinions) rather than the issue of openness.

Why don't iOS and Android allow plug-and-play layouts with their built in keyboards? It would be low complexity and put power/accessibility back into the hands of users.

Most of us agree that we like open systems; it's also well established that certain companies have a tendency to design closed systems. What do you think needs discussing here that hasn't already been discussed in hundreds of other HN threads?

Why is OP expected to have participated in or read hundreds of other threads?

I think it's much higher complexity than you may be giving it credit for. Each of the keyboards is likely "hand-positioned", or there must be a very complex rules engine to cope with the myriad screen sizes, layout row and column count, the fact that columns are staggered, plus the hover behaviour for extra symbols, and that's not even counting things like Pinyin inputs or swipe inputs for symbol based languages. Oh and then there's the ML models for predictive text, spelling correction, key hit box detection, and swipe typing.

All this complexity means that you essentially need UI and logic to implement keyboards in the general case, and both platforms allow for third party keyboards, albeit with tight security controls given their privileged position.

There are so many keyboard layouts for different countries and variations thereof. I very much doubt it's hand-positioned. The layout is not that hard, you can use a fairly straighforward linear constraint solver to lay it out on various different screen sizes. Surely at this level of localization it's more than an afternoon's worth, but I it's not hard in the grand scheme of things.

Maybe it's not quite hand-positioned for every screen, but with the level of detail necessary in the constraints for a constraint solver to be able to do it, I think that might as well be considered hand-positioning in some sense.

Also, it's only anecdotal, but in ~10 years of installing day-1 betas of iOS, I've yet to see an autolayout bug on the keyboard. Admittedly I'm using British English which I'm sure sees a lot of QA testing, but incorrect constraints would probably be a hot spot for issues, and I've seen autolayout bugs in a ton of other software, so my guess is still that it's not really that automated.

What makes you assume the keyboard is built with auto layout? It’s optional and adds overhead.

I think this is it. There are a bunch of tiny details in the iOS soft keyboard that make typing more accurate and I bet a lot of the behavior is hard-coded. For example, if you use the split keyboard layout on the iPad and you try to hit the Y key with your left thumb even though it’s on the right side keyboard, the software will fudge it to make it work anyway. If you shift your thumbs while you’re typing and suddenly you’ve crossed the border onto another key, it seems like it shifts the hit boxes slightly to compensate (I’m not sure how to reproduce this one 100% of the time though).

It's not THAT hard. The problem is that very few people use alternative keyboard layouts. In proprietary software/hardware, there's just not a lot of incentive to satisfy the needs of small minority of users. In the open source world, at least there's the possibility that individuals in these minority communities would be willing to make changes.

They do. You can build custom keyboards for both. It’s just that this is native iOS, which is important because iOS allows disabling custom keyboards in certain contexts (passwords) or completely.

I've tried several 3rd party Dvorak keyboards for iOS and they all feel subtly broken. It gave me the impression that making a 3rd party keyboard feel good must take a lot of work, effort which doesn't get put in when the goal is just enabling a single layout.

I just want simple things as having the keyboard layout on iOS and iPadOS to actually be the same. On 15.6.1 on both devices, the international keyboard key and the shift key has switched place in the different OSs. So I always end up hitting the wrong key for shift/change keyboard. This is a fairly basic and stupid design bug.

Isn't allowing third-party keyboards with any layout they want the definition of openness? You could always have Dvorak on iOS. Why does it need to be natively supported?

Android does! The API is quite esoteric, but I've built a custom layout before for the Pixel C, way back when. You ship a special XML layout file in your APK that gets picked up by the input framework.

it seems like this is a per-application setting rather than a per-user setting? which would almost entirely negate its usefulness in my opinion.

Nope, the input framework picks up the layout XML from all packages that export a BroadcastReceiver with an Intent filter for the android.hardware.input.action.QUERY_KEYBOARD_LAYOUTS action.

However, it looks like I am wrong, and this is only for hardware keyboards, not software IMEs. It looks like there is an API to pass extra data about layout via InputMethodSubtype, but it's basically a key-value map and thus is completely not standardized across IMEs, if any IME even supports redefining the layout through this API.

> Why don't iOS and Android allow plug-and-play layouts with their built in keyboards? It would be low complexity and put power/accessibility back into the hands of users.

The worry that said app would find some way to exfiltrate what the user types, perhaps? What with passwords being typed with keyboards and all that.

Both platforms have supported custom keyboards for years. I much prefer SwiftKey over the native Android keyboard (with network access disabled, because Microsoft). Sure, password stealing is a potential problem, but you accept that risk the second you decide to download a soft keyboard.

And my grandmother might not know of that risk. Nor do 99% of people out there.

> Why don't iOS and Android allow plug-and-play layouts with their built in keyboards?

If you surveyed 1000 people if they would like to switch from a QWERTY keyboard... I imagine you would get one person say yes. If that.

But not Colemak. macOS has supported both Colemak and Dvorak, and I find it infuriating that they not only haven't supported it on iOS yet, but even more infuriating that they only added Dvorak.

I can only be thankful that Colemak is supported on external keyboards on iPadOS, even though the virtual keyboard doesn't support it.

I used to use Colemak on Android before I switched to iOS. As nice as layout parity was in principle, it was noticeably unfit for swipe typing. Too many words just ping-ponged along the home row.

I used Dvorak on Android, before switching to iOS. Same problem, of course. It was nearly unusable with swipe (my now preferred input). It made me realize how badly a swipe optimized keyboard is needed.

Why do you want Colemak on your phone? I switched to Colemak for my physical keyboard years ago, and didn't keep up my QWERTY skills, so I'm fairly crippled typing on a QWERTY keyboard; but I have trouble typing on my phone with my thumbs.

Presumably people like us are exactly why it's included on external keyboards for iPadOS.

I too use Colemak for physical keyboards and Qwerty for soft keyboards.

It is nice to have the consistency available. Though, I don't really have a need for it. Only case I can thing of is typing a few, key memorized passwords. I don't really remember the actual password, just the motions. Kind of a pain to motion it out and translate it to qwerty.

Colemak wouldn't be as useful for thumb typing or swipe typing as QWERTY.

The hardware keyboard support is adequate for my needs (on iOS too, it's handy to fold open a Bluetooth keyboard to use with your phone) and I've never seen a need for Colemak in the software keyboards. I can't properly touch type on an iPad even if it supported Colemak because there's no "touch" there and I wouldn't want to accidentally ruin my touch typing skills with a "watch the keyboard" fake touch typing device. Easy enough to just have Bluetooth hardware keyboards handy. The iPad even has nice ones that attach by magnets and act as covers so they are always around.

For what it's worth, SwiftKey on Android supports Colemak and Dvorak, so I presume the iOS versions do as well. It's not the stock keyboard, but it's not bad either.

SwiftKey for iOS was just discontinued.

That's one hell of a mind fuck! I wouldn't know what to do with that keyboard (at first) and I've been typing with Dvorak for ages. If you're touch typing, you never look at the keyboard, so I just don't recognize this layout (visually). Still, great news.

If I had a tablet device or regularly used one, I'd be able to get used to the seeing the layout. Maybe then there'd be a improvement when thumb-typing on a phone-sized device, but I agree with the other commenter that it probably wouldn't be worth the hassle. Something to check out in a couple of years, when I end up with a device that runs iOS 16.

The keyboard layout is for external keyboards too. So it means you can use your Dvorak BT-keyboard with your iPhone/iPad.

Not just a fancy key arrangement on your phone’s screen ;-)

Ah, I've been using some setting on my Samsung phone to make bluetooth keyboards dvorak for many years now.

I think that option has been available since way before ios16. The situation for Colemak is still that it’s possible to use an external keyboard with that layout, but there’s no on screen keyboard (unless you use a third party keyboard)

Yeah, I can confirm hardware keyboards have supported Dvorak layouts in iOS since ages ago. This change is only for on screen, which I am apparently a weirdo for preferring dvorak. It was one of the things that stuck in my craw most when switching back from Android.

It does take time to learn the Dvorak layout when thumb/swipe typing, but I find the propensity for distance between most letters, except some common cases that prediction nails, to be far preferable to QWERTY.

Ah, okay, that's a useful clarification.

I will be surprised if this post turns up any experienced dvorak typists who want an onscreen keyboard to be non-qwerty. I've been typing dvorak for over twenty years and prefer all non-touch-type keyboards to be qwerty so I can find the keys fastest.

Well, surprise to you! :-)

I'm not fanatic about iPhone/Android, but if I'd looked into switching to iPhone then this would be a hard dealbreaker for me.

I've been on Dvorak something like 15 years. All my devices use it.

Do you use a swipe keyboard on your phone?

I do, and I missed being able swipe on ios after moving to dvorak. It does take some getting used to, even for a dvorak typist, but in my subjective experience, I find the dvorak swiping accuracy to be better. I’ve read the reasoned argument that it should be worse, but it hasn’t been my experience.

Yep. Also I don't know about other Dvorak users but I've been using blank keyboards for 15 years since there's no point having a qwerty layout on there. I didn't even recognise the Dvorak layout in the picture.

On computers, with a real keyboard, I prefer blank keycaps. I don't mind a qwerty layout, I just set it to dvorak in software.

I've been using dvorak for 10+ years now and have always used it on my (Android) phone as input method too. In my experience it's not a positive nor a negative to use dvorak on a mobile phone. My brain is so used to dvorak now that I just keep it on dvorak.

I switched to Dvorak in 2009 for touch typing on a full-sized keyboard (IBM Model M). When I got my first smartphone (Nexus 4), I used a Dvorak keyboard layout for quite a while, but I found that the arrangement of the Dvorak layout, so ideal for touch typing, actually made two-thumb typing a bit tougher than QWERTY on a small mobile device. I switched back to QWERTY on mobile permanently when I first got access to a swiping keyboard, because there's less ambiguity per pattern (since common letters are spaced further apart).

I'm an Android user which has had Dvorak phone keyboards for years and I've used them since I switched to Dvorak on the desktop. I'm sure there's not the same benefit, but I can touch type on my phone pretty well, and I definitely can't do that with qwerty. It's probably just habit, but it's nice to have the option. I'll definitely be switching over my iPad keyboard.

hand raised Me! I've been typing Dvorak for 15+ years, wanted an iOS version, and previously had to resort to using the Gboard app (Google's keyboard app) in order to get this on iOS. I'm thrilled this is now available natively.

I use Dvorak for 'real' keyboard typing but I don't feel an advantage from having Dvorak on my phone. If anything, having common letters spread out, and not all on the home row, is helpful in making swipe patterns more distinct.

I use Dvorak for 10 fingers. I use QWERTY for two thumbs. It turns out my brain keeps the two separate with no issue whatsoever.

Maybe I'm just not good enough, but i use Dvorak on desktops(~110wpm on typeracer) and still use qwerty on my phone. The (perceived) comfort improvement just isn't there for me when I'm typing with two thumbs and use a swipe keyboard half the time anyway.

Are you serious? Long time Linux guy here and I'm always gobsmacked by finding out stuff like this -- knowing that a lot of developers use Apple. The extent to which Apple stuff is locked down never fails to just strike me as absurd.

iOS has supported Dvorak for a long time for hardware keyboards (Bluetooth keyboards). The new addition is native support for Dvorak in soft keyboards (on-screen keyboards), and even then there were 3rd party apps to try (since the virtual keyboard can be extended by apps).

Third party keyboards existed with Dvorak. But there is now finally a built-in option.

I switched over to Dvorak 20 years ago on the keyboard to the point where I cannot type on a qwerty keyboard at all anymore (If I'm forced to, I hunt & peck really slowly). When the first iPhone came out, it was no problem at all because typing with two thumbs was just an entirely different experience and my mind didn't really conflate the two.

I just tried this dvorak keyboard, and it's like switching to dvorak 20 years ago — it's hard. The backspace in a completely different position doesn't help at all either.

Agreed, the new position for the delete key is the biggest barrier for me.

But in general it’s surprising how much muscle memory I have for QWERTY on the phone. I’ve been a Dvorak user since 1996, but I didn’t last 5 minutes with Dvorak on iOS.

I've been touch-typing Dvorak for 30 years (first learned to touch-type QUERTY then switched to Dvorak and never went back). However, I've been using Querty on mobile phones ever since they came out and don't find it to be a problem. The mechanics are so different and I'm usually looking at the keyboard anyway, unlike touch-typing, that it doesn't conflict the way that it does if I try to type Querty on a PC keyboard.

I was using Dvorak on Android (on-screen soft keyboard) back in year 2014. So many features take forever to arrive on iOS, from a file browser to customizable keyboards to split-screen apps to home screen widgets. If you're a power user who likes customization, iOS is not for you.

For me, I don't type much on mobile. I know Dvorak is suboptimal because many typos of adjacent keys become real words; for example HAT vs. HOT, THAT vs. THAN, THIS vs. THIN. But because I type heavily on desktop using Dvorak, it's much less cognitive effort for me to use the same keyboard layout on mobile. I did try QWERTY on mobile briefly, but I decided it was just not worth my brain power to maintain that skill.

What I'd love to see is something comparable to the long-hold punctuation that's been available on Android keyboards (Swiftkey definitely, I think it used to be on Swype) for probably most of a decade. Heck, even having the ability to have a number row would be nice.

I love that I can type my password at phone start without having to change keyboard screens multiple times. Doing the same on iOS with the native keyboard would require at least 6 context switches.

I can predict one unverifiable thing from the (still!) state of the iOS keyboard: Steve Jobs had a sh*tty password.

Heads up: you can swipe from the shift or symbol key to any other key on the iOS keyboard to shortcut to the alternate outputs (eg “g” becomes either “G” or “(“) Which I believe is what you’re after.

Yeah, still pales in comparison to SwiftKey on Android. Quick, without looking, which keys do you swipe to for ~ or _? On Android I long hold either E or Z, visible on the key.

I don't own an iPhone, but most of my family does. One weird thing is that you can input numbers without a context-switch on an iPad, but (as far as I can tell) you can't on an iPhone; drives me a bit mad.

Being a long time Dvorak user, I also was in the mobile qwerty camp. But then few year ago, made a switch to Dvorak on mobile as well. Works well for me in swiping and tapping and both for English and Estonian. I remember the small pain of not knowing where letters were, since it's all in different muscle memory, but after a while a new muscle memory developed.

I don't see how that helps on a touch screen. Guess the OP is used to it on the desktop.

As a programmer i type pretty fast. Not pro typist fast, I'm probably using like 6 fingers. Still, I find the times I need to stop and think dwarf any speed improvement I'd get either by learning to 10 finger type or using an alternate keyboard layout.

I would put comfort as the main benefit of Dvorak, far before speed.

Interesting how this coincides with SwiftKey leaving iOS which was the only good option when it came to getting Dvorak.

I tried Dvorak on my Android phone years ago, thinking I would gain from having the same layout on both my phone and my computer. Since my Dvorak skill was entirely muscle memory, though, and I had much better conscious knowledge of QWERTY, I got no advantage from it.

I was expecting Dvorak to have some huge speed advantage over QWERTY and looking it up the evidence that is it faster is hearsay and conjecture, not science. My guess would be with training and 10 digits, where the keys on the keyboard are simply doesn’t matter all that much…

As a Dvorak user for around 20 years now, the reason I switched, and the reason I will stay, is comfort (RSI specifically). Comfort is the common theme with other Dvorak users that I've meet.

For a quick smell test, watch someone type the same sentence with Qwerty, and then Dvorak: https://youtu.be/udc9CH8ICVQ

I've been using GBoard for Dvorak and it's awful. This is a welcome addition.

What’s awful about GBoard on iOS?

I also use Gboard for Dvorak on iOS (well, prior to reading this post) and it's laggy and slow. I think that's true for all non-native keyboards on iOS, though. I've just switched to this new native keyboard option and after 2 minutes of playing with it, I can already tell that it's faster.

I've been using Dvorak on my computer and QWERTY on my phone since I got my first iPhone. Not sure if there's any point switching at this point, but I'm glad I can try it and see.

Completely different design goals for swipe keyboard. I think I’ll pass.

Why not dvorak one-handed (both right and left)? I've tried it when I've injured one hand badly, and it's optimized for one-handed typing.

Dvorak is not great for phone keyboards because it makes swiping words more difficult by crowding the home row. Something like KALQ makes more sense.

Back during the Palm Pilot days I was a big fan of the FITALY keyboard. I sometimes wish there was a version of it for android.

I think if you were optimising the goals of a touch screen keyboard, your focus would probably be in minimising mistakes, and you'd end up with different sized keys.

I doubt you'd end up with Dvorak. I'm also highly skeptical that your muscle memory of a real keyboard helps much with a phone keyboard. At best it helps you know where the keys are - but they're already shifted a bit to deal with the smaller space.

Conversation missing here is Dvorak is a stats placed key arrangement. Frequent keys placed near the home area. And rare keys towards the outside.

What advantage does does this Dvorak put on touch screens? None.

A real Dvorak or Coleman would do something epic: rearrange keys radially at two different centers. But still the advantages would be dismal. I think.

The UMPCs did that with Dial Keys. Users liked it but it still didn't catch on.

This is great for people who use an external keyboard with an iOS device.

Brothers and sisters of Dvorak! Hark and come forth!

And here I was, thinking they just replaced the U2 album with the works of Antonin Dvorak.

Only for English

Meanwhile Android supports morse code.

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