# iOS keyboard

28 Hacker News commenters recommended iOS keyboard and 182 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 8 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 10 years (9 owners).

**Verdict:** Recommended for reliable tap typing, accurate swipe typing and built-in multilingual support, though many critics report autocorrect and key errors that have worsened over time.

## Why people recommend it

- Settings tweaks noticeably improve typing (5 comments): "If you turn off swipe or swift or whatever they call it the iOS default keyboard is much better" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46762966)) "I have great results on the ios keyboard by simply making two changes to the keyboard settings" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47005460)) "One thing that helped me a lot to fix the iPhone keyboard was turning off slide to type." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48201104))
- Reliable, accurate tap typing (4 comments): "It works very reliably for me, and I've learned to type long prose on my phone quite well." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47008716)) "The autocorrect works, the keys I tap are right." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47005559)) "my thumb typing this flawlessly with one try" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47734371))
- Swipe typing works well (3 comments): "Apple's swipe to text is so good that I forget there's still work to be done in the space." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48655450)) "Well, iOS swipe keyboard is not that bad. I would not call it “permanent suffering”." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48656288)) "swipe to type works just fine on the native keyboard" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47008480))
- Preferred over other keyboards (3 comments): "somehow it works even better than the keyboard for me most of the time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48197365)) "found a touch keyboard (fleksy) I liked as much as the iOS keyboard" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50118946)) "I prefer the iOS keyboard than over the Android ones." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47005174))

## What people warn about

- Typing has degraded over time (5 comments): "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." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49703598)) "Ive been really annoyed at my iphone keyboard recently because it seems like a slow drift of whatever optimized state it was in was getting slower and slower." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49190375)) "I swear Apple broke the iPhone keyboard permanently in like 2015. I don't know what it is, but I can't type reliably" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46586735))
- Autocorrect replaces words unexpectedly (4 comments): "its awful, awful repeated "corrections" it applies" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47004934)) "iOS being absolutely unable to detect which language I'm currently writing in and automatically replacing words in one language to another" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47006907)) "their random generator keeps replacing perfectly fine words _and the words before them_ with random crap that makes no sense." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47013011))
- Keys register the wrong letters (3 comments): "how close they put "enter" or "@" to space on the right side, so when you type with both hands you keep hitting those when you want to type a space" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46234223)) "Now I feel that it is constant exercise in frustration as I will hit a letter and the keyboard will decide to pick the letter next to it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46233057)) "deleting when I meant to space, putting an I instead of K and a bunch of other little things like thinks instead of things" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46240350))
- Cursor placement hard to control (2 comments): "Substituting touch to select instead of touch to move cursor was a genuinely awful decision that now makes typing a constant chore" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46239288)) "It is so painful to move the cursor to one specific letter that I frequently just erase everything and start over." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47009457))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Unexpected Keyboard](https://hackerapproved.com/p/unexpected-keyboard.md): 15 recommend
- [Nintype](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nintype.md): 9 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "iOS keyboard", https://hackerapproved.com/p/ios-keyboard/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).