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Typing on a glass slab is terrible. Even after a decade, I still struggle with fat-finger syndrome and autocorrect failures. Moving the cursor after one mistake is tedious. To me, a touchscreen is chaotic compared to the tactile certainty of a mechanical switch.
However, it turns out the hardware wasn’t what frustrated me. After a lot of annoyance, I started to wonder if there was more to the problem than the touchscreen itself.
The real problem was how I had set up and used Gboard. I was having trouble because I thought Gboard was just a simple keypad, not realizing it could be a powerful tool to help me get work done. Like many others, I was not using Gboard’s best features.
- OS
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Android, iOS
- Developer
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Google LLC
Gboard is a virtual keyboard app developed by Google for Android and iOS devices, featuring integrated search, GIFs, swipe typing, voice input, and multilingual support.
By leveraging Gboard’s power-user utilities, I was able to overcome the inherent clumsiness of touchscreen input. I went through Gboard’s hidden-to-mainstream features to find the ones that saved me seconds of sanity. I even checked out other options, such as open-source Gboard alternatives, but these powerful features Gboard offers have kept me sticking with it.
Text shortcuts
Strings attached, but for your convenience
This is my personal favorite, as text shortcuts have made it so easy to insert repetitive and typo-prone long strings. I often have to insert complex and repetitive text like an address, email, or even a standard message like “I am occupied in a team call,” which has no space for typos. One mityped character could send critical emails or a package meant for me to someone else.
Gboard’s personal directory lets me map short, unique abbreviations to complex strings. For instance, when I type “email,” it expands to my email address, and when I type “address,” it expands to my house address. This not only eliminates typos in such critical strings, but also transforms a 15-second struggle into a 1-second reflex.
And since Gboard is tied into the Android ecosystem, if I add a shortcut to my Pixel device, I can use it on my Galaxy Tab without needing to set it up again (after signing into my Google account).
Avoid using common words for text shortcuts, as this will turn a convenience into an annoyance. A good trick is combining symbols and words that are easy to remember but not commonly typed, such as “@email” or “@address”.
Clipboard manager
You might forget; Gboard won’t
For me, Android’s native copy/paste functionality has historically been finicky. I’ve often experienced the disaster of copying a crucial tracking number, getting distracted, copying a meme link, and realizing I overwrote the tracking number forever. This has no longer been a problem since I enabled Gboard’s built-in clipboard.
Unlike the system-level clipboard that (usually) only holds the most recent item that you copied, Gboard’s clipboard manager retains an extensive history of copied text and images from the last hour. But the one feature I like the most about Gboard’s clipboard is that it lets me pin items.
This is invaluable for texts I need frequently but don’t want to assign a text shortcut to, such as bank routing numbers, multiple hashtags for social media management, or canned responses for work emails.
Be mindful of security; unpinned items auto-clear for a reason. Avoid pinning sensitive passwords if your device is often unlocked.
Text editor and spacebar cursor
If you have to edit long texts, do it with convenience
Editing long-form content on my phone—such as a Google doc or an extensive email—is a nightmare. Trying to tap my finger between two specific characters to fix a typo more often than not results in the cursor landing three characters away. This is because my fingers (usually my fat thumb) obscure the item I’m trying to touch.
Gboard features a dedicated text editor mode that replaces the keys with a directional pad (D-pad). This layout provides you with arrow keys for single-character movement (up, down, left, right), along with dedicated Select, Copy, and Paste buttons.
This mode turns the lower half of my phone screen into a precise input device, rather than a guessing game. It allows for granular control that isn’t possible with touch inputs, effectively emulating the arrow keys on a desktop keyboard.
While the text editor mode is great for heavy editing, it’s overkill for fixing a typo three words back. That is where the spacebar cursor comes into play. When I’m in a chat text box and only want to correct a typo a few words back in a sentence, I press and slide my thumb on the spacebar on Gboard. This moves the cursor through the text, making it great for a quick fix rather than resorting to a dedicated editor tool.
Swipe to delete
Swipe your mistakes away
The backspace key on any software keyboard has always been a task of its own for me. Tapping it 50 times to delete a garbled sentence is slow; holding it down is risky, as it accelerates and often deletes more than I intended. In Gboard, this is solved with a simple, quick, and handy gesture.
Swipe to delete is a gesture where you place a finger on the Backspace key and slide slowly to the left. By doing this, the cursor will move through the sentence while selecting the word or entire sentence, depending on how far left you go and how much you want to select. The moment you lift your finger, the highlighted part is deleted.
The faster you swipe left, the more of the sentence will be selected with shorter finger travel. This is helpful when you have longer ranting paragraphs or gibberish caused by pocket typing. And the best part is that if you delete more than what you intended, the suggestion strip will immediately offer a prominent Undo button, saving you from disaster.
Supercharge your texting experience with these Gboard tricks
Gboard is a powerful keyboard; in fact, some iPhone users even switch to Gboard instead of the stock iOS offering. But before you configure it, it feels plain since its default settings prioritize simplicity over capability. The difference between you feeling frustrated and like a power user is often just a few toggles in the Gboard settings menu.
By setting up text shortcuts and mastering the gesture controls, I stopped fighting with Gboard and started actually controlling the glass slab I carry every day. I highly recommend setting up just one text shortcut—perhaps the clipboard with a few of your regular work emails pinned—right now. The time you save in the next 24 hours alone will be worth the effort.
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