I leveled up my typing game with these 7 simple Gboard features

As with most Google products, I’m constantly switching between Gboard and its many alternatives. I spent a good period with the open-source keyboard HeliBoard, which reveled in its simplicity and privacy-forward concept. However, as I’ve recently jumped aboard the Pixel and new Galaxy train, I decided I should probably commit to Google’s keyboard for the foreseeable future.

For the most part, it’s been brilliant using Gboard on modern Google and Samsung handsets, but it still wasn’t as comfy a cushion as I wanted. So, to maximize my Gboard typing game, I’ve reevaluated the app’s practical features, settings, and shortcuts and tweaked these to better suit my typing style and boost my productivity.

My Gboard toolbar, which offers me plenty of ways to command the text I channel through it, was a bit of a mess. The app offers around a dozen shortcut buttons that you can freely rearrange on the toolbar above the keyboard and when tapping the shortcuts button. I ensure these icons are arranged in the order I use them most to boost my typing efficacy. I do this on every device I use.

Your arrangement will likely be very different from mine, but here’s my toolbar layout in order from left to right:

• Clipboard
• GIF
• Settings
• Text editing
• Translate

Gboard allows up to five icons on the toolbar, so any spillover options can be accessed by tapping the irremovable Shortcuts button. Here I can find other items like Theme, Floating, and Resize, although I don’t require these much, if ever.

Notably, while I’m on the subject of the toolbar itself, I also toggle on the Show recently copied text and images in suggestions bar option in the Clipboard settings tree.

Like most Google apps, Gboard is flush with gestures that are just waiting to be exploited. Granted, many of them aren’t as immediately obvious and Gboard doesn’t do a good job of exposing them to users.

Nevertheless, once you’re aware of them and place them within your daily workflow, you won’t be able to live without them. They are incredible for bolstering your typing performance.

Here are a few of my favorite Gboard gestures:

• Press and hold, then swipe left and right on the spacebar to move the cursor through your text.
• Swipe left on the backspace/delete key to remove entire words.
• Activate one-handed mode on the right-hand side by long-pressing the Enter key. For lefties, long-press the comma key.
• You can access common punctuation marks by long-pressing the full stop icon. You can also swipe up from the ?123 key to access a few more, but this is a little clunkier.

I make full use of this shifty shortcut

There’s nothing more annoying than Gboard automatically changing the case of a word. Thankfully, there’s a quick way to jump through lowercase, sentence-case, and all-caps without too much fuss.

Highlighting your intended word and pressing the shift key will do the trick. It’s a small but brilliant time saver and means that I don’t have to jump into Editing mode, track back to the problem word, and adjust the case manually. I use this trick so often that it deserves its own separate entry on this list.

However, I sometimes need the power of Editing mode to grapple with more extensive sections of text.

My smartphone replaces multiple items in my pocket, including a dedicated paper notebook. As a result, I jot down my thoughts on my device itself. This also means that after I’ve dumped my points onto the screen, they demand plenty of editing to make it somewhat usable. That’s where Gboard’s dedicated Editing mode comes in.

To access it, tap the caret icon with two small arrows on either side. As mentioned, I keep it in my toolbar for easy access. Once activated, the keyboard will transform into a direction pad with Select at its center, allowing you to easily jump between characters and grab entire words. The right-hand side offers Cut, Copy, Paste, and backspace options, while the bottom two icons allow me to jump to the beginning or end of my text wall (the equivalent to Home and End on a physical keyboard).

I’d really like a compact version of this baked into the keyboard, and Google has somewhat listened to my pleas with its Undo and Redo buttons. However, I haven’t yet received this feature on my devices.

Free-typing without any aids is one thing, and it’s my preferred method of writing quick messages, but to really speed up your typing speed on Gboard, you’ll need some support from the app itself. To ensure its brain is constantly growing and its recommendations remain accurate, I’ll occasionally tap on the words it suggests. This I do when I’m not pressed for time and have a few moments to allow Gboard to generate its options.

Naturally, the more often I do this, the more often Gboard recommends the word I most intend to use in any situation. This is easy to forget, too. For me, this entire process is still a work in progress, as I don’t use Gboard’s suggestions nearly as often as I should.

I do prefer typing messages manually without Gboard’s help. However, when it comes to typing out incredibly lengthy words, common phrases, or favorite terms, simply tapping on an option on the toolbar trumps typing out the entire string. More importantly, the better trained Gboard’s suggestions are, the better your swipe typing experience will be, too.

I tend to correct myself manually when typing out a message, trying not to rely on Gboard for this too often. But I reevaluated this silly idea and realized that a little help would go a long way. I make frequent typos when using a new phone with an unfamiliar design and screen size. All this is to say that I’ve finally dug into my Text correction settings on Gboard once again.

To review these settings, tap the cog and navigate to Text correction. Here, you’ll find a laundry list of items that govern how Gboard treats your text.

Here are the items I toggle on and off:

• Show suggestion strip: On
• Next-word suggestions: On
• Don’t suggest offensive words: Off
• Suggest Contacts: Off
• Auto-correction: On
• Undo auto-correct on backspace: Off
• Autospace after punctuation: Off
• Auto-capitalization: On
• Double-space period: On
• Spell check: On
• Grammar check: On

I turned my Personal dictionary into a smart text expander

Finally, don’t look past the usefulness of your personal dictionary. While it’s meant to store words that you often use (as a South African, that means terms like “braai” and “aweh”), you can use it as a native text expansion tool.

To give you a better example, when I pick up my loved one from work, I’ll let her know I’m about to leave. Previously, I would have manually typed out: “I’m leaving in a bit,” or something similar. But using my personal dictionary, I’ve added the entire phrase as a word and saved it with the shortcut “ilb.” Now, when I type those three letters, Gboard automatically suggests the full term in its toolbar. I can then simply tap it and send the message.

You can do this for so many text strings, from your address to a lengthy combination of text or characters that’s easy to forget (like your car’s plates). If there’s a line of text that you constantly type out, this little trick will save you minutes each day.

To access your personal dictionary, tap the cog, then select Dictionary > Personal dictionary. Select the language you want, then tap the + button to add word/shortcut combinations.

You can and should save common words to the dictionary, but this little trick will massively boost your Gboard productivity.

There are plenty of other Gboard tips and tricks I haven’t covered in this article, but those I don’t consider beneficial for my use cases. If you have a specific Gboard feature that benefits your typing flow, let me know how you use it in the comments below.