Using Dvorak keyboard layout in iOS 8

As most of you know I have been waiting for many a moon for a Dvorak keyboard on iOS. I think that layout is far better then QWERTY. As a side note I had to type on a QWERTY a couple days ago and my wrists quickly started hurting. If you have hand trouble you may want to consider switching over to Dvorak too.

Well, the long awaited day has finally arrived and a system wide Dvorak keyboard is here! In fact it has been possible ever since iOS 8 came out in September. So why the long wait in getting the good news to you? Two reasons. First, nobody immediately came out with a Dvorak keyboard, much to my chagrin. Second, by the team keyboards started coming out school had heated up considerably and I had to put the blog on the back burner for a month or so.

But now it is time. In the past couple months quite a few 3rd party keyboards with Dvorak layouts have slipped into the App Store. I will tell you about two of them here: Fleksy and Dvorak + Colemak Keyboards.


Fleksy
Price: 99¢
Stars: 2

Fleksy came out with the launch of iOS 8, but they did not support Dvorak as a layout right away, even though they already did on Android. Many people really like the Fleksy keyboard and say they can type quickly on it, I cannot. I find the way they do predictive typing to be odd and unwieldy. When they finally did ad the Dvorak layout I found that the keys did not line up as you would expect them to if you were use to typing on a regular Dvorak keyboard.

You can see this in the image below. The entire top row is not aligned where it should be, I soon found out that for some odd reason this is the case in many Dvorak layouts on iOS currently. This makes it hard to type because the keys are not where you would expect them to be.

Fleksy has lots of language layouts besides Dvorak, and it has a lot of customizability in terms of color and size. It also has special swipe gestures for certain functions. My main purpose here though is to review it as a Dvorak keyboard and so I won't go into everything that it does.

Fleksy requires you to give it "full access" under keyboard preferences in order to change to any layout other than English QWERTY. Usually keyboards need full access so that they can do predictive typing, the only problem is that in order to do that they have to collect your keystroke data. This has caused a lot of controversy around the internet because it could potentially be logging things like passwords and credit card numbers. Almost all 3rd party keyboards will ask for full access, it is not just Fleksy.


Dvorak + Colemak Keyboards
Price: 99¢
Stars: 4

Right off the bat this keyboard is looking better because the keys are in the correct locations for anyone use to a standard Dvorak layout. This allows there to be punctuation on the main keyboard, just where it should be. It shouldn't take long for those people to become familiar typing on this keyboard.

This keyboard does lack a lot of the bells and whistles that Fleksy and many other keyboards have, but that doesn't bother me. I don't need fancy color themes or size options I just need something functional.

One thing it is lacking though that is a problem though is an Emoji keyboard. I use emoji a lot when tweeting or texting, so this is a bit of deal breaker for me as far as everyday use goes.

Dvorak + Colemak Keyboards does no require full access to use, so your keystrokes are not logged. You will have to enable full access if you want keyboard clicks however because this is the only way that Apple will allow them to get access to the speakers.


Where I am now
Still using the standard Apple QWERTY onscreen keyboard. Why? Because, and this is nothing the app producers have control over, but 3rd party keyboards have been spotty across the board on iOS 8. Perhaps Apple was not really ready for them, but no matter which one you use it is likely to be buggy. They are sluggish and sometimes (often) will disappear completely. This makes it really unviable to use a 3rd party option as your default keyboard.

So for now, even though I was waiting for this day for so long, I am still primarily using the default keyboard. I hope that Apple will make significant improvements to 3rd party integration in the future, or better yet just make Dvorak part of the standard language package.

Well I hope you have found this post helpful, even if a little discouraging :( If you have found a keyboard (Dvorak or otherwise) that you like to use on iOS please let us know about it in the comments.


Disclosure: Archagon provided me with a free copy of Dvorak + Colemak keyboards to review. I never recommend anything on my blog though that I have not tried myself and that I approve of.

How to Use Dvorak Keyboard Layout in iOS

Update 10/6/14: Yesterday the Fleksy keyboard app released an update that contained a Dvorak layout that can be used system wide. Over the last month there have also been a few other attempts to do this, none of which have been very successful yet.

Note: This post was written before the release of iOS 8. In iOS 8 Apple allows developers to create 3rd party keyboards that work system wide. Because of this it is likely that someone will soon create a keyboard with a Dvorak layout. If you find one please let me know.

The simple answer:
The simple answer is that you can't, but there is more. There is no option to turn the iPad or iPhone touch screen keyboard to the Dvorak layout. If there was it would be under Settings > General > Keyboard > Keyboards > Add New Keyboard > Dvorak. Unfortunately there is no option to choos Dvorak in that list. It skips straight from Dutch to Estonian. Of course it could be under English (Dvorak) since it is an English layout, but no, it is not there either (English keyboards are at the top of the list). There are three options for English layouts besides the default American (UK, Austraila, and Canada) all of which are QWERTY layouts. So don't ask me why they need three of them that are exactly the same, and they can't have one Dvorak.

A different spot:
But, then we find out that is not actually where it should be at all, because if instead of clicking on "Add New Keyboard" we click on "English" we find the keyboard layout menu. This is really where the Dvorak option should be since it is an English keyboard layout. You see two menus, Software keyboard layout and hardware keyboard layout. Under software you can see that you have three options, none of which are Dvorak.

Finally after much searching we find that Dvorak is listed under hardware keyboard layout amidst a strange and non-alphabetical list. Turning on this option will make any hardware keyboards connected to the iPad Dvorak layout, regardless of what the letters on the keyboard actually say.

Your only option:
So there you have it the only option to use the Dvorak layout is to use and external keyboard. This is what I do when I am typing a lot, like for this blog post for example. But when I don't have a keyboard with me I am stuck just using QWERTY.

What is ridiculous about the whole thing is that there is no reason that Apple could not have made it an option to have Dvorak be the on screen keyboard. Clearly iOS knows the layout because it can have the hardware option. It would not have hurt anything to make it an option. I mean there are 9 Chinese options so I don't think it would have hurt them to put in another English one.

For now use an external keyboard if you do a lot of typing, and hope that iOS 8 brings an on screen Dvorak. And remember, live better.

Dvorak, the Metric System, and why we fail to do what's good for us

I grew up at a time when children were taught both handwriting and typing. Needless to say I appreciated one more than the other, but I worked at both of them for years. I had a number of different programs I used to learn to type; some of them were games which required you to type to accomplish certain tasks. They all had two things in common though, they recorded how fast you typed (WPM) and they taught you to type on a keyboard layout known as QWERTY. I am sure you are all familiar with this layout because it is the standard on all American computers and if you were taught typing this is most likely what you were taught to type on. In fact most people have never considered the possibility of any other layout.

But I did, as probably many children do, when they first look at a keyboard and find out the alphabet they have so diligently learned to sing is all mixed up. I don't know who I asked or what I read when I was young about this but I came under the impression that this bizarre layout had been made to enable you to type faster. I remained under this impression until I was reading Mark Hurst's book: Bit Literacy.

In the book Mark explains that QWERTY was designed to slow typists down, not speed them up. Imagine my chagrin at this.  All my life I had been trying to type faster, all the while the instrument I was using was working against me.

WHY!? To keep typists from jamming mechanical typewriters. Now, that seemed like a good and worthy goal to me...and then it occurred to me that I didn't use a typewriter. So, why in the wide world was I typing on the QWERTY layout? The answer is simple:

That is the way everyone has always done it

Can you think of anything more stupid than that?

I can't. We have an entire generation, almost two now, whose productivity has been stifled in one of their most common activities simply because that was the way it had always been done. And the truth is that we do this all the time, I'll point to an example that is probably much more familiar to you:

The Metric System
Now here is something we were all probably taught growing up, but we were never required to use in actual life. The metric system is far superior to the British system of measurement in every way. So, why don't we use it? Because we have to much built up around the British system, all of our infrastructure and our mental processes. We've always done it this way and we are unwilling to change. We will spend plenty of tax payer money teaching children the metric system in school, but we won't spend any of it replacing infrastructure so they can actually use it.

The truth of the matter is that as a society we have decided that we would rather deal with a dull pain constantly than an excruciating pain for a short period of time. We do this even if though it means our children with have to deal with the same chronic pain. These pains have been around so long that society doesn't register them as pains any more, but the costs are still real even when they go unnoticed.

If we really cared about our children, or even ourselves for that matter we would be willing to deal with more intense pain now, in order to eliminate chronic pain. But, we do not, we are lazy and the same school system that teaches us a keyboard layout designed for typewriters, and a metric system we will never be given the chance use, also teaches us to never challenge the status quo.

But it doesn't have to be that way. We may not be able to make society change tomorrow, but we can change individually. We can choose to go through the painful and cleansing process of intentional change toward a desired outcome. We can live better and we can help our children to do the same. We can question and overthrow the status quo. Society is nothing, if not a group of individuals.

So go ahead and do what is good for you, regardless of the way society is built. Society is built for the average person, actually worse, society is built for the lowest common denominator. You don't want to be average, and you certainly don't want to be the lowest common denominator, you want to be extraordinary.

So go ahead, do what's good for you, question the status quo, and remember to live better.