How to create keyboard shortcuts on an iPhone or iPad

Do you have to type the same thing over and over again? Maybe it's your username, maybe it's a question you get asked all the time, maybe it's your birth date, maybe it's a hashtag. Whatever it is, it can be super annoying to have to type out all the letters and words you need every time you need them. It is like having a typewriter all over again! (by the way there is an app for that if you really feel nostalgic about typewriters).

Fortunately there is a way to solve this problem and it is built directly into iOS, no app required. It is called keyboard shortcuts. Now this can be a little confusing because we normally think of keyboard shortcuts on the computer as being things like "cntrl-f" or "cmmd-z" to cause certain actions to occur. On iOS it is different. A keyboard short cut here means that you can type in a few code letters and iOS will ask if you want to replace them with some predetermined text.

Let's say that I have to type my consulting website's url all the time, and I don't want to do that anymore, so I make the shortcut bcom expand to the text bendnielsen.com. I show how to do this in the gif below:

Then every time I am typing and I need to put in my url I can save time by just typing out bcom, my iOS device will then suggest bendnielsen.com in the same way that it does with autocorrect. Isn't that awesome? Notice in the gif below how it follows the capitalization of what you actually type, so you want to watch out for that.

And that is really all their is to it. You can add as many of these as you want, and they can even be quite long, so you could put a whole email template in here if you chose and get it all typed with just a few letters. Be sure to make you shortcuts something that you wouldn't normally type naturally so you don't accidentally trigger them.

There you have it. Go create some keyboard shortcuts to make your life easier, and remember, live better.