Does direct touch typing work on the iPad?

By Ekim, 14 March, 2020

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Hello, I found out after posting on reddit hat direct touch typing works as expected on the iPhone but not on the iPad. I own both a 2017 10.5” iPad Pro and a 2018 iPhone Xs. Both are running iOS 13.3.1. Have any other iPad owners experienced this? Otherwise would you instruct me on how to make it work? Thank you.

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By Yvonnezed on Thursday, March 26, 2020 - 06:53

I'm not sure. I use direct touch typing on an ipad every day so I don't know why it wouldn't work.

On the other hand, if you mean the new slide typing feature in ios 13, that only works on an ipad if you shrink the keyboard down to the small iphone size.

I can't actually remember how to do that, and I'm not in front of the ipad at the moment to work it out.

Ok I don’t mean slide to type. I’ve tuned that feature off. Would the typing feedback options have anything to do with this? That’s where it says words and/or characters after you type. It also includes nothing as an option. My guess is that it has no affect since Apple’s support site says it simply turns off the VoiceOver keyboard. I’d really like to figure this out! Maybe a restart would work,

By Yvonnezed on Thursday, March 26, 2020 - 06:53

Well, a restart is always the first thing to try. What's it actually doing? I've got mine set to characters and words, and it works the way you'd expect, speaking characters as I type them and words when I hit space. I wouldn't actually suggest nothing as a setting btw. Maybe set it to words if you're a confident typist. Or at least, if yore setting it to nothing, have it speak autocorrect for you, ☺️

What happens is that letters don’t register while typing even at a very slow rate. For example, a regular keyboard goes tap tap tap while direct typing goes tap, pause, pause, tap, pause, etc. Sometimes whole words are skipped. the restart didn’t work so maybe I’ll reset the settings now.

By Ekim on Thursday, March 26, 2020 - 06:53

It’s working now. At first I reset the settings but that didn’t work. So I erased the iPad and it worked.

A couple of suggestions. Try toggling voiceover on and off. Try another app like notes or drafts, I've sometimes had this happen in one app but not another. Try shutting down and reopening the app you're using. Maybe even try turning off speech but leaving voiceover on. See if that narrows it down any. After that, send a detailed message to accessibility@apple.com.

About the only thing I can think to do in the meantime is use the next most efficient thing you can, probably either touch typing or maybe FlickType.

You could also, I suppose, try typing with voiceover off entirely but speak autocorrect turned on, depending how accurate you are.

Thanks for the suggestions. I’ll turn voiceover on/off for now. It’s not the worst thing I suppose considering all the other great accessibility features.

By Ekim on Sunday, April 26, 2020 - 06:53

Can someone try this? Turn on the Follow Focus and Smart Typing options in the Zoom settings, change the Typing Mode to Direct Touch Typing, then when you’re within a text field, zoom in and start typing. The Direct Touch Typing mode should allow you to type as fast as you want without any delay. Would you tell me if the typing slows down or if any letters are being skipped?

Edit: One other setting to check is that you have full screen zoom enabled, as opposed to window or pinned zoom.