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Here’s how Apple finally fixed the shift key in iOS 9

If you’ve ever been confused by the shift key on iOS (which color means it’s turned on?!) we’ve got some good news: Apple has finally made it easy to tell whether you’re about to type a capital or lowercase letter. Check out the video below to see the new shift key in action.

As you can see below, the keyboard now shows capital letters when shift is turned on, while it shows lowercase letters if it’s turned off. You can disable this new keyboard design from the accessibility settings if you don’t like it.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8tkM-scOrc&feature=youtu.be]

Apple announced iOS 9 earlier today and will release it later this year. You can follow all of 9to5Mac’s coverage of the operating system for more details on what’s new.

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Comments

  1. bpbatch - 9 years ago

    Sometimes the obvious solution is the easiest to achieve.

  2. Greg Kaplan (@kaplag) - 9 years ago

    AWW HELL NO. That’s not a fix – that’s a new problem.

    This isn’t a good solution. It essentially doubles cognitive load. It’s very rare that you need to even think of when things are capitalizing in iOS. It does it automatically. That means when you are looking for “L” and you only see “l” you won’t process it right away. This sounds stupid but when you are in a rush or under stress this will make recognizing characters harder. It’s why the iOS keyboard has always been all caps.

    I hope they get rid of that shit before release. Just turn the damn shift key blue like pre iOS 7 and be done with it. This was never a problem before and I sure as hell don’t want this “fix”.

    • chrisdunning - 9 years ago

      Except that the keyboard is always a QWERTY layout. L will always be where L is. The “cognitive load” is a non issue.

      • Greg Kaplan (@kaplag) - 9 years ago

        Yes that helps but it can still throw people off when they look to where they expect to see it and see something different. Plus all of the characters around it are different so you loose important visual landmarks.

        I’m sure people will think this isn’t a big deal and that others already do it this way but I don’t think it’s actually a better solution. I still don’t understand why they broke something that was never an issue and won’t just revert back to how it was.

    • Daniel Beehn - 9 years ago

      There is no “cognitive load” about it. I’ve used this feature for a long time on my Android phone and have never had a problem, and in fact greatly prefer it to Apple’s past implementation. If you are that dumb that suddenly lower case letters hinders your ability to type, then you probably shouldn’t be using a smartphone, period.

    • Murat Korkmaz - 9 years ago

      You’re right, this certainly isn’t a proper fix. A quarter of the letters(W,O,S etc.) only change slightly in size and not recognisably in form. Which, even if it’s for a millisecond, can cause a slight confusion, which undermines the intuitivity of your typing experience. I know it’s nitty gritty sh*t but these things, once done properly, result in great functional products, this solution clearly isn’t the right one.

      Don’t worry, I’ve fixed this already, along a couple of other problems, on my own smartphone keyboard. It’ll be a new and far better typing experience, launching this summer, look out for it on the App Store!

    • therackett - 9 years ago

      There isn’t a cognitive load issue here in the germane sense, because a schema already exists. Cog load is the wrong concept.

      Given the ubiquity of QWERTY and the associated (well entrenched) schema, from a psychological standpoint, there isn’t any reason to suggest this will cause a problem whatsoever. Cognitive load is only an issue in the absence of a schema. In typing it’s the layout of the keys, not the letters on the keys, that inform the schema.

      As a matter of fact, what you suggest would actually cause more problems as by now, a schema exists based on the gray and white shift key. I doubt this confuses many people anymore – a white key means shift is on. Not difficult. From a psychological standpoint, learning white = on is no different than learning that blue = on.

      • Greg Kaplan (@kaplag) - 9 years ago

        yes, keys are always in the same place. But you find them by seeing their spacial relation to other keys don’t you? So if you are looking for a key and can’t find it immediately where you thought it would be (because it doesn’t look like what you were expecting) then you look around and it takes a second to processes that oh I’m in lowercase now.

        That keys are represented by consistent icons is a schema too. Physical keyboards and previous apple ones have established that the only character you need to look for is the capital form. Now that schema is changing, but instead of my solution, which would require users to understand one new symbol, this one requires people to process 26 new ones in an instant.

        Fine if you are already comfortable touch typing on glass, but less so for elderly who have a harder time at seeing and less coordination. Imagine how frustrating that would be.

        You are also missing something about the current implementation and it again has to do with spacial relation to other keys. Yes, learning white = on is easy except that all the alphabetical keys are always white and shift is right next to them. This makes it harder to process what state the shift key is on. Shift also doesn’t behave like any other key. It stays active after being pressed vs the others that only look active when you are currently touching them. Introducing a new color would call out that this key works differently and should not be confused with the other function keys or alphabetical keys.

      • therackett - 9 years ago

        I’ll debate your thought process. I hold both an M.S. and Ph.D in this stuff…so I’m not coming at this from outer space.

        I understand what you’re aiming for – but this simply is not how the human mind works. The brain isn’t making a decision between upper-case or lower-case. You’re positing a decision between the two, however one is only presented with one or the other at any given time. There isn’t any extra mental work involved as there isn’t a new decision happening, aside from selecting caps, which already happens…except as of now, you hit caps and the only indication of change is the caps button, which isn’t ideal.

        Beyond that, the brain will process a lower-case e just as it would a upper-case E. Unless the person is illiterate…which is another problem unrelated to this dialogue, and not Apple’s fish to fry. One could easily argue that there is a cognitive hangup due to wanting to type a lower-case a, and when you look at the keyboard the only A you see is upper-case. Extending this to the elderly, you’d be hard-pressed to argue that showing the actual case being typed would be more confusing than showing them a case that is opposite their intent.

        As well, these aren’t 26 new symbols. These are letters of the alphabet that are burned into the mind of anyone who can read from the age of 2 through death. Now, if you’re arguing that this change will make it more difficult to type for a person who can only read an upper-case alphabet, then you may have a point. However, I should note that special needs keyboards come with lower-case keys because it’s less confusing for minds that have trouble with these kinds of things.

        Anyhooo – the blue button isn’t the panacea here. This new solution is more elegant, makes more sense, is more in-line with how we write and interpret writing, and is more in tune with how the human mind processes information. It’s a stretch to argue that typing a lower-case letter, and seeing a lower-case letter on a keyboard will present a problem.

        I would gather that at some point physical keyboards will get as dynamic, and the letters will change to indicate the actual letter case just the same. Static case is a hangover from not having a choice on physical keyboards.

    • justin w (@silverpepsi) - 9 years ago

      The cognitive LOAD is that after more than 5 flipping YEARS with iOS tablet and phone, I haven’t been able to stop my brain from determining itself when I want caps and when I don’t, meaning autocaps almost 100% consistently causes the exact opposite effect of what I was trying to do. For that reason AND no way to dismiss all notifications (I collected over 100 in iOS 7 waiting for iOS8 to release for a button to clear them and they FAILED to deliver, ) I left the platform.

    • fantas0s - 9 years ago

      That has NOT been a problem on Symbina/Android/BB OS/Sailfish/MeeGo/whatever since 2008. If it was not a problem for 6-7 years, it won’t be a problem now.

      OTOH: not knowing which case is in use by a quick glance WAS a problem. ;)

    • 1sugomac - 9 years ago

      This is going to create a huge usability problem…for about 24 hours and then people will move on and forget about it.

    • Mike Beasley - 9 years ago

      I turned off auto-capitalization years ago. This is an excellent change for me. Now even if my thumb is covering the shift key I know what I’m about to type. I had been doing exactly this with a jailbreak tweak for years.

    • how can you be so dumb that you only recognize capital letters, the keys are still in the same position. And if time is your problem, why do you even care if you write in capital

  3. irelandjnr - 9 years ago

    I think it’s a super solution.

  4. theoriginaljcgarza - 9 years ago

    This helps, but the color of the Shift key is still backwards.

    • Exactly. They’re trying to get out of a hole by digging deeper.

      • Greg Kaplan (@kaplag) - 9 years ago

        I’m not too worried. There is plenty of time to get feedback on this before fall. A lot can change.

    • irelandjnr - 9 years ago

      It’s not backwards filled-in is always considered on.

      • Greg Kaplan (@kaplag) - 9 years ago

        The issue is that it’s next to a bunch of keys that are always white. That’s why a different color all together was a better solution.

    • Evan - 9 years ago

      Having a function key be white would be backwards, which it was before iOS 7. The last version fixed that issue and all the function keys were grey, except people didn’t understand the simplicity of the design and got confused because of how it used to be.

  5. bunam - 9 years ago

    It was so hard to find ;(

    Now Apple you can adopt this http://imgur.com/NhNEMhM which is a one year ago idea ?
    It’s a really a good solution trust me ;)

  6. lapenskie - 9 years ago

    Gotta love when Apple implements the things jailbreakers have had for years.

    • iSRS - 9 years ago

      …as much as I gotta love the associated comments about jailbreakers/Android having something first/for years. As if first/for years is some sort of quality seal.

      Today what struck me was that, looking back, Apple has historically done things with iOS their own way. Let other systems do low hanging fruit. Today, Apple eliminated nearly every advantage other systems use to differentiate themselves

  7. mynotdailyjournal - 9 years ago

    It’s about time.

  8. Jim Hassinger - 9 years ago

    I noticed this during the keynote, though it wasn’t pointed out. I think this is right. Gruber thinks it should be like a typewriter, which doesn’t change, it’s always capitals. But this is a way smaller keyboard.

    • therackett - 9 years ago

      Gruber will change his mind on use. Mark it.

  9. I’m sorry but lowercase letters make it look like an Android keyboard, which is not a compliment. I would have much preferred if they had given in and allowed the shift key to turn green when activated. If they don’t make the change optional, I will have to start writing in capital letters only!

  10. baussie - 9 years ago

    Personally I don’t like the new lowercase letters keyboard at all.

  11. Matt Widjaja (@iwidji) - 9 years ago

    I have iOS 9 on my devices and just to be clear, you do not have to stick with lowercase — you can disable it from Accessibility.

    That said to all the naysayers, I encourage you to at least give it a try. I was unsure at first but after an hour or so, I immediately enjoyed instantly knowing what I’m about to type when I tapped the key.

  12. This is not a fix for the shift key, this is NEW functionality for the rest of the keyboard.

    For me, the shift key is still wrong (backwards, frankly) and like some others, I preferred it pre iOS7.

    I note some of the comments identifying that the function keys are a different color by design but this is not the case on any of my physical keyboards, where all the keys are the same color, all the time. Personally, this is what I also expect from my on screen keyboard. The keys should all be white, unless in operation.

    To have the shift key a different color from the main keyboard, but BECOME the same color when in use (i.e. when on), is counter intuitive.

    I firmly believe that extra functionality, above and beyond the limitations of a physical keyboard, SHOULD be available and used in an on screen keyboard where it adds something beneficial, but in this case, it simply introduces confusion.