The Standard Android Keyboard

The keyboard generally comes up whenever it's called for. Whenever you open up an app that needs input, or click somewhere to input text, the keyboard jumps up, and your screen shifts to keep the keys right under the text box.

Typing in the Gmail App

The orange border indicates which box has text being edited. Underneath the buttons needed for this email, you'll see guesses by the system as to which word you're typing out, changing as you type each letter, with the best guess highlighted. Pick any of the words with your finger, and they drop into your text. If that highlighted word is, in fact, the word you're trying to type, you don't need to tap it with your finger—just hit the space bar, and that word gets automatically completed.

Adding to Your User Dictionary

Those word suggestions you see as you type come from a standard dictionary included on every phone. If you commonly use particular words that aren't included in the dictionary, you can save yourself time by adding them to the "User dictionary." You can do it from the main Settings, but it's also not that tough to add as you type.

Adding to the Dictionary

When you hit a word that you realize your phone will never consider legitimate, select it by double-tapping the word with your finger (or, the much longer way, choosing "Select text" from the "More" menu, if available, and using your trackball to grab it).

Hit "Add 'Your Word'"

Next, press and hold on the word (or hold down the trackball), and scroll down in the pop-out menu to choose "Add X to dictionary."

Edit and Hit "OK"

You'll end up inside your User dictionary, with the word you want to add already loaded in. You can modify it here before submitting it, or just hit "OK" to submit the word.

Next time you start typing in the first few letters of your odd little word, it will show up in the suggested words list above the keyboard, and you can save yourself the typing time. Highly recommended for residents of Mooselookmeguntic, ME, Kleinfeltersville, PA, or Waugullewutlekauh, CA.

Android Keyboard Layout

The keyboard itself features a slightly modified "QWERTY" layout familiar to any computer user. The "up" arrow near the lower-left is the shift key: hit it once to pick out a single capital letter, or twice to type in all-caps. The backspace key is on the far right, the enter key just below it. Second from the left on the bottom row, there's a microphone icon, which we'll explain in just a bit.

At the very bottom and left is the keyboard "switch," for lack of a better term—it opens up half of the other characters you're used to seeing on a full keyboard:

The Keyboard after Hitting the "?123" Button

Hit "ALT" on the left and you'll get another set of even more specialized keys:

The "ALT" Keyboard

But let's say you're sick of hitting the "?123" and "ALT" buttons to get at your alternative keys. Starting with Android 2.2, you can press and "pull" the top edge of the keyboard up with a finger or thumb, then navigate to one of 20 common punctuation marks or numbers shown there.

Keyboard Extended by "Pulling" up with a Finger on Android 2.2

With one or two thumbs in the "portrait" orientation, you can type out a few words, or start a search and click the best result as it comes up. If you need to do a bit more typing, simply turn your phone sideways (into what's commonly called "landscape" orientation, as opposed to the more vertical "portrait") and the keyboard will rotate automatically. You'll lose the view of the app you were in, but you'll gain a keyboard that's conducive to faster two-thumbed typing.

Keyboard Turned for Landscape (Sideways) Typing

It's worth noting that, while the keyboard generally does a good job of knowing when to pop up and when to hide away, there might be rare occasions when you need to pull up the keyboard manually, or hide it when it's obscuring text or buttons you need access to. To manually pull up the keyboard, press and hold your physical Menu button on any screen, and the keyboard should pop up. To hide an errant keyboard, press near the top of the keyboard and "swipe" it downwards, as if you were sliding down a projector screen.

Android 2.3 "Gingerbread" Keyboard Layout

Android 2.3 (a.k.a. "Gingerbread") Keyboard.

Google made the keyboard a focus in its Android 2.3 update, and the efforts have paid off. We'll discuss the much, much better text selection and copy/paste procedures in that next section, but here's what's worth knowing about the Android keyboard in Gingerbread:

• Google has "reshaped and repositioned" its keyboard "for improved targeting." In sensical English, that means that the key layout, and spaces between keys especially, have been changed a bit. It also means that when you start typing "T-H," the area around the most common letters to follow, "E" and "I," will be more easily hit by your fingers.

• You'll hopefully use the "?123?" and "Alt" keyboard switches less often. You can get at numbers, listed in light gray in the upper-right corner of top-row letters, by pressing and holding on those letters. Press and hold on other letters, and you might get a pop-up choice of accents and special characters. Finally, you can press the Shift key and a letter on the screen simultaneously to get at the characters above a key.

• The letter you've just hit is made more apparent with this keyboard, and the auto-complete suggestions are placed a bit farther from the keys, so they're easier to see and hit.

Selecting, Copying, and Pasting Text

You can copy text from your emails, from the browser, or from other text-intensive apps that offer the option. The option "Select text" is usually tucked away in a "More" menu. The process for selecting and copying text on most non-HTC Android phones is the same, and once you've got that text copied, you can paste it into any app on your phone.

Note: The select, copy, and paste process is much improved in Android 2.3 "Gingerbread"; read a bit further to see it detailed.

Let's say that I need more coffee to keep cranking out these book chapters (that's actually far from hypothetical). I'm going to ask my publisher to send it to me, but I need to specify which brand of coffee for my Keurig brewer. So I open my browser and head right to the purchase page:

The Text I Want To Select

With the page pulled up, I hit the Menu button on my phone, select the More sub-menu, then pick "Select text" from the offerings that come up.

The Pinpointing Cursor for Text Selection

From that point, you could use your finger to pick out the text you need, but unless you're looking at very big, isolated text on a fairly large screen, you'll probably get frustrated with your tiny little over-steps and under-shoots. However, if you've got a trackball or similar device, you can move the (oddly Windows-like) cursor to the point at which you want to start or end your text selection.

Selected Text is Highlighted

Click the trackball/tracker device, then start scrolling in the direction of the text you need to capture. When you've got just what you want selected, click your tracking device again, and you'll see a notice pop up: "Text copied to clipboard."

Text Will Paste Where Your Cursor Is

Back in my Gmail app, I've written up what I need before my paste, then I'll press and hold on the text field, and select "Paste" to put my text right where the cursor is positioned.

Successfully Pasted

Perfect. I can smell those deep notes of robust mountain flavor wafting through my office already.

If I were using an HTC device, the text selection would be a little bit different. Actually, it's not all that different, if you've ever used a modern iPhone:

Selecting Text on an HTC

After picking "Select Text" from your menu, you press and drag your finger to the approximate point you want to start or stop your selection. Two markers will pop up, which you can then hold down and drag to better fit the outline of your text. Once you're done, you can press the "pages" icon to copy that text, the spy glass to search for it on the web, or the Share button to send the text through one of your other apps.

Selecting, Copying, and Pasting in Android 2.3 "Gingerbread"

Text selection is far more intuitive and manageable in Android 2.3, and you might never need to use a trackball or other pointer device again.

Pinpointing Cursor Position with the "Paddle"

When you're editing text in a field, with your keyboard popped open, you can tap anywhere in the field to bring up a small cursor controll on your screen. It's a kind of tiny handle, hovering just below the cursor, that you can drag around with your thumb to poinpoint exactly where you want to start fixing text. If you tap once inside a word, you'll also see the same auto-complete suggestions you saw when typing to quickly fix the word.

Replacing a Word by Tapping Inside

When you want to select a word or other singular text bit (like a web site address) for copying, pasting over, adding to your dictionary, or deletion, press and hold on it. You'll get a prompt to select that one word, all the text in the field, and two or three other options that aren't related (including keyboard input switching and dictionary adding).

Text Selection Options

Whichever option you pick, "word" or "all," you'll get two more finger-friendly controls, or "paddles," to fine-tune exactly what you're selecting.

Android 2.3 ("Gingerbread") Text Selection with Two Arrows

Drag your paddles around to contain all the text you want to copy, until the right range is highlighted in orange. If you wanted to simply delete a range of text, hit the backspace button your keyboard. But if you're copying, or pasting text over that text, When you've got them all highlighted in orange, press and hold down briefly somewhere in the orange area. You'll get a menu with the three basic copy options.

Android Home Screen

Press the action you want. This works between any two apps or widgets where you have a text box to type in--from email to web searching, perhaps.

What if you want to grab the text off a web page, or an email that's been sent to you? Some apps will offer a "Select text" option in their menu options. In the Browser, and in the Gmail app, for example, you can press your phone's Menu button, choose the More option, then pick "Select text" to then be able to press anywhere and get the text selection paddles up. (In the Browser, actually, you can press and hold with a finger anywhere to bring up the selection paddles, but most apps require a "Select text" option be selected).

Selecting Text from an Email (Through the Menu Option)

 

Keyboard Settings

Keyboard Settings Screen

You can't reach the settings for the standard Android keyboard through any button on the keyboard itself. Instead, head back to your home screen, hit the Menu button, select Settings, then choose the "Language & Keyboard" section. Select the "Android keyboard" offering, and you'll see these options:

• Vibrate on keypress: Check it to have your phone make a little micro-vibration every time you press a key. It can give you a little more reassurance that you're hitting the right keys, and may speed you up, but can also be an annoyance in very quiet spaces—hence, it's off by default.
• Sound on keypress: Your phone will actually audibly click every time you hit a letter. There's very little reason to turn this on.
• Auto-capitalization: Un-check this if you don't like how your phone automatically capitalizes the first word after a punctuation mark.
• Voice input: An odd label, because this only changes where the microphone icon to trigger voice input appears: "On main keyboard," "On symbols keyboard," or nowhere ("Off").
• Input languages: As noted on the setting itself, you can change your keyboard language—affecting the words recognized and punctuation available, mainly—by sliding your finger across the spacebar. But you can also pick one or multiple languages here.
• Word Suggestion Settings:
  • Quick fixes: Decides whether Android should automatically fix the typos and misspellings that it notices your fellow humans make all the time.
  • Show suggestions: Un-check this box to get rid of the words over the keyboard you can press for quick completion.
  • Auto-complete: When checked, Android will automatically pick the most likely word you're typing if you hit the spacebar or a punctuation key. It's greyed out if "Show suggestions" is un-checked.

The Magic of Voice Recognition

Click the Microphone to Voice Search

On both the "portrait" and "landscape" setups, you'll see a microphone-style icon. What happens when you press it? Your phone starts listening, so say something into the phone receiver. You don't have to hold the phone up to your face as if you're on a call; simply talk as if on speakerphone.

Wait for Your Words to Hit Google's Servers

As soon as your phone senses that you've stopped talking for a full second, it gathers up what it just recorded, submits it to Google's servers, and uses the search company's database of speech-to-text data to take a stab at what you were saying.

Google's Transcription of Your Voice, Underlined

What you just spoke, or Google's best stab at what you just spoke, appears underlined in the text box starting from the point you had your cursor. It's worth learning—though you'll probably figure it out on your own, unfortunately—that if you hit the backspace/delete key right after your voice-to-text words show up, you'll be telling your phone, "No, that wasn't it at all," and everything gets wiped out. It's best to move your cursor around just a bit with the trackball before fixing any errors, and also to hope Google fixes that shortcoming in a future update.

Facebook Voice Search

One of the most important things to note about this speech-to-text feature is that it works almost anywhere you type in text. If you're walking around and don't want to be the person who trips while texting, or find yourself deeply lounging on the couch and not wanting to type, go ahead and say what you'd like to write: in an email, a text message, a Facebook update, a web search, anywhere. Once you get used to speaking for translation (see the next section) and using your voice everywhere, you'll start to feel like the future is on its way—even if the future sometimes throws a "come on" in where you meant to have a comma.

Voice Actions in Android 2.2

If your phone received its upgrade to Android 2.2, or came pre-loaded with it, you'll want to check out Voice Actions, an upgrade for Google's speech-to-text capabilities that goes far beyond web searching and text filling. Press and hold down your phone's Search button, or press the microphone button on the search bar widget, and you can actually start an SMS or email with your voice ("Send text to John Smith"), launch your music ("Play Motorhead") on both your local music player or streaming services like Pandora, get Navigation directions, and more. Best of all, you can speak out your text or email messages piece by piece, then edit any misunderstandings with the keyboard or your voice.

For more tips on what you can do with Voice Actions, check out Google's showcase page. If your phone received its update to 2.2 over the air, you'll have to search the Market for "Voice Search" to download the updated Voice Actions.

Tips for Better Speech-to-Text

Leo Laporte, host of the This Week in Tech podcast (and, more apropos, This Week in Google), put it best: for Google to understand what you're saying, you should speak like a radio host. Enunciate, slow down, and maintain a constant kind of "lift" while talking. If that all seems like too much, or it's too awkward, just stick with the slowing down. You can speak your punctuation, saying "comma," "period," or "question mark" out loud. Don't be afraid to use city or place names, either—the audio's being passed to Google, which, as you might imagine, has a pretty big database of locations.

How does Google know how to convert what you're saying into text? Google once offered a free phone-based business directory service, GOOG-411, that has since closed. Everyone in the U.S. or Canada who called 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) and spoke the business they were looking for, along with city and state, could be connected for free, or have additional information sent by text message. Google now uses the data it's collecting from voice searches to continually improve its recognition.

As you might have guessed, Google has been using all that speech—in particular, the phonemes of regional dialects—and the search results they're connected to in order to build a pretty huge speech recognition database. It is far, far from perfect, but it's also surprisingly good at times.

Alternate Keyboards

HTC's Keyboard, Included by Default on Phones with "Sense" Interfaces

Not every phone comes with Google's own keyboard installed as the default, and not every phone has to keep it around. In fact, many of the phones manufactured by HTC—the Hero, the Droid Incredible, and the EVO 4G—feature their own keyboard configuration as part of the HTC Sense theme. It's unique from the stock Android keyboard in many ways, including the rounding of buttons, the inclusion of "upper" characters you can access by holding down a key, only offering predictive word suggestions when in landscape mode, and the inclusion of a ".com" shortcut button. There are also a slew of specific settings, available in the same place as your standard keyboard.

Trailing Your Finger Around the Swype Keyboards to Make it Guess Your Words

Look around in Android's Market, and poke around the web, and you'll likely find quite a few keyboard apps and alternatives. One of the most interesting categories contains gesture-based keyboards like Swype, ShapeWriter, and SlideIT. They all work on the same principle: rather than lowering and raising your finger, tapping on each letter in a word, you can slide your finger over each letter in your word. These keyboard apps will look at the shape you've "drawn" with your finger, note the turns and pivots, and enter in your word with surprising accuracy. Most of them aren't totally free apps, but they're worth checking out, especially if you're using your phone one-handed far more often than the two-fisted mode.

Keyboard App Alternatives and the Android Default

Say you've installed Swype/ShapeWriter/SlideIT/etc., or maybe you found a neat hack to install the stock Android keyboard on an HTC Sense phone, or vice-versa. How do you switch between them? The easy way is to press and hold on any area where you'd enter text, then select "Input method" from the pop-out menu. You'll get a list of all your available keyboards. I use this quite often with my preferred keyboard, Swype, because Swype doesn't offer a voice input button while the standard Android keyboard does. Not seeing a keyboard you installed in the list? Head to your Keyboard & language settings in the main Settings app and make sure there's a check next to it to enable it.

There's a lot more to a keyboard than just typing, eh? Now that you're familiar with all the ways you can enter text, let's get better at the other controls on your phone.

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