Ah, so that’s why that happens? I was gaslighting myself.

What's hilarious is that typing was nearly perfect on my 3gs (with "iPhone OS 3"--back before it was even "iOS").

Oh wonderful. That’s what’s happening to me. I’m an author and Apple‘s dictionary appears to be missing about half the more uncommon words in the English language. It’ll never recognize “prescient” in dictation for example. Some words it marks in red because it thinks it’s a spelling error. I know it’s not because I’ve used it, read it, and it’s in online dictionaries.

At least I’m macOS I can use Talon instead of the system dictation.

In addition to this, there is a delay in the suggested word such that when you see the options above the keyboard, decide you see the word you want, stop typing and move to select it, it changes right as you land your finger.

Thank you for putting a name to this phenomenon. I hadn't gone through my yearly attempt to figure out why iOS was terrible for text entry. I figured since I only have an iPad and not an iPhone, and infrequently type in it, that it just hadn't learned my habits or words. It's incredible that they've developed these kinds of algorithms that have made every facet of text entry from speech to text to spell checking to typing itself such a miserable experience.

Interesting. Because I have a much harder time typing on my Pixel. In fact, I hate it. I wish I had a blackberry.

When I use iOS devices, it feels better but I don't use them enough to have used them in anger. Ok, well, yes they have made me angry but for other reasons than the keyboard hence why I'm on Android lol.

JFC I hate this so much. Why can't they simply add a setting to disable this.

This explains so much... Never knew, just constantly gets frustrated because even if my thumbs are big, no way I press wrong that often...

If you turn off swipe or whatever the hell they call it the keyboard is a lot better.

Gboard on Android though is way better

I had a second gen iPod Touch and from what I can remember the keyboard experience was vastly superior than the iPhone now

Try turning off slide to type. It's under Settings > General > Keyboard.

I did it earlier this year. It seems to be much more accurate and confident with which key it thinks I want. I do occasionally miss the sliding but it's worth it overall.

I used to have galaxy S phones with some aftermarket keyboard whose name I forget. It was quite popular at the time, and was fairly happy with it.

When I moved from a gs5 to an iPhone 7, I was amazed at how much better the typing experience was. But it has now gotten to a point where I feel like a drunk monkey would type better than I do.

Yay, I found my people…

I switch between Android and iPhone every few cycles, and I really do miss my swipe keyboard on Android.

iPhone swipe and tap keyboard always gives me trouble. I hate that it keeps trying to type my contacts’ names.

Also, text selection OSS frequently maddening. Yes, I swiped “is” and it decided I’m a fan of open source software… When I try to select some words or position my cursor, iOS always wants to put the cursor far away from where I held my finger. Doesn’t make a lick of sense.

As someone who has had an iPhone since the 3GS (I'm so old), but tries Android out every now and then - I can wholeheartedly agree.

The only real advantages iOS have left are not being run by an advertising/tracking company (which is reducing as Apple looks for services revenue) and the quality and variety of indie iPhone and iPad apps (yet Apple are happy to make those same devs extremely unhappy).

I would actually go one step further and claim that typing has not come back to the speed and accuracy of Blackberry and Nokia phones with physical keyboard. It's taking so long that we may actually destroy humanity with AI before we have fast and accurate keyboards again.

Completely agree. I switched from Android to iOS... 6 years ago now? and the keyboard immediately felt off. I thought it was just something related to needing to adjust, but I reused my old Android (Pixel 3a) for the first time a few days ago (cuz I'm working on an Android app and wanted to try it on an actual phone) and the keyboard just works. No typo, no ass completions, I can actually type fast as I feel it and the text ends up mostly (99%) correct on the first try. On iOS I sometimes really struggle writing exactly what I want (the worst offending situation is iOS "correcting" a word when I hit send, so what's sent is literally not what I typed)

For some reason, the one word that it just will not let me swipe is “and”. Which is, you know, somewhat common. I get all kinds of random things instead.

It's intriguing. Danny! Infuriating.

I think it's slightly worded if you swore. No. Slightly worded. No. Slightly worse if you swipe left handed. Yes. At last.

I also use it all the time and I hate it very much. It almost never works right on the first try.

Sometimes I swipe the same word 5 times in a row and it gets it wrong every time, despite me being slower and more precise each time. I give up and type it by hand. Note: this is NOT the censorship issue, that's separate (where it will not allow you to swipe certain words or phrases AT ALL, no matter how hard you try. Like if you type "kill" it won't let you swipe "him" or "her" after it, though some other words work. There are many instances of this)

Unfortunately for us swipers, disabling slide to type on an iPhone makes typing significantly more accurate. I can only guess as to why, but after seeing anecdotal reports over the last year or so from people raving about how much better typing was with swiping disabled I finally got fed up enough to give it a shot myself. It is much, much better, to the point where I'd never re-enable slide to type until Apple finally fixes this.

Would have been totally gaslit by my iPad on this only I have an android phone to compare my typing accuracy on.

Have to wonder how often you hit the wrong letter and the keyboard corrects it to what you actually wanted though.

Yes! The way it tries to be smart about what you actually wanted to press but has certain areas that are exceptions to that rule — like space bar — drives me crazy.

Oooh that's what's happening! I sometimes end up with garbage like "so ' I'll" instead of, say, "someone" and I wondered how it happened.

What do you find lacking in iOS’s swipe keyboard implementation?

You can install a different keyboard if you want. I used 3rd party swiping keyboards but ended up using the system one for the last few years because it doesn't bother me.

I switched to iPhone for 2-3 months but the keyboard was so back I switched back to Android. If Apple can't get a keyboard (any keyboard!) to work in a decade, I'm going to an OS that works.

It's crazy that SwiftKey was terrible too, even though it's the one I use exclusively on Android.

Can't "autocorrect" be replaced to "autosuggest" instead like on android devices?

I have never been fan of autocorrection tools (especially as I am regularly writing in 4 different languages) regardless of the OS but definitely use autosuggestions to correct potential spelling errors.

I have French / English and every time I start my sentence with "The" (obviously the start of an English sentence), it autocorrects as "Thé" (tea). There's veeeery few situations in French where a sentence can start with "Thé".

This is the “dynamic key area” in action

This! So many times have I hit one of the keys in the row above space. I think this might actually be caused by them resizing the hitbox because I am not that fat-fingered.

Your specific usecase has a native solve. Tap the status bar on any scrollable content view to scroll immediately to the top of the page. This has been around since, I believe, iPhone OS 1.

Command+up arrow and down arrow behave exactly as you say on my computer: like home and end do on PC/Linux. Command left and right for how it also behaves on Linux/PC if you're in a text field. They always have? I use that combo all the time and only have issues in Safari tabs that overload the arrow keys with bullshit.

Command + up/down is pg up/pg dn. Command + left/right is home/end.

It used to be there but a few releases ago the option disappeared.