Try These Clever Keyboard Shortcuts on Your Phone

Hidden tricks can save time and make you more productive

Edward C. Baig,

AARP

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Published June 16, 2026

Key takeaways

Touch and hold letter keys to reveal accents and special characters on iPhone and Android.
Turn the spacebar into a trackpad or cursor control for more precise text editing.
Create custom text shortcuts to expand a few typed characters into full phrases instantly.

AARP members and readers are invited to submit pressing technology questions they’d like me to tackle in my Tech Guru column, including issues around devices, security, social media and how all the puzzle pieces fit together.

This week’s column shares helpful tips on using your smartphone’s keyboard.

I’m one of those people who tends to use keyboard combinations as shortcuts on a computer rather than use a mouse. Back in the day, I also used smartphones with physical keyboards, but those have disappeared. It got me wondering about shortcuts I might want to know about on virtual smartphone keyboards.

As you mentioned, we’re long past the heyday of once-popular BlackBerrys and Palm Treos, before Apple’s iPhone, in 2007, put just about every smartphone with a physical keyboard on the endangered-species list. Those devices were replaced by virtual touchscreen keyboards that morphed and adapted to whichever app or circumstance you were using them in.

As with physical PC keyboards, the virtual variety on phones has its own set of handy tricks, and it’s true for iPhones and Android devices alike. I’ll mention a few below, but I also recommend that you explore the keyboard settings on your device to discover various ways to get the most out of them, from smart punctuation tools to haptic feedback.

Long-press keys for accent marks and other special characters

From time to time you may need to add cedillas, tildes, umlauts and other diacritic marks to foreign words, names and phrases.

It’s simple to summon these marks.

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On iPhone. Press down and hold the key corresponding to the letter where you want to add the mark. A row of options with special characters appears just above the letter. Slide your finger until it lands on the appropriate variant, then lift your finger.

For example, to enter the acute French accent aigu(é), touch and long-press the “e” key. Slide your finger to the acute option, one of 10 choices that appear.

If you press down on a letter key that doesn’t have any underlying diacritic or other special characters, like an “f,” the phone will add that letter in English (or your preferred language) to whatever it is you are composing.

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Options may also depend on whether you are using an English- or a foreign-language keyboard.

On Android. The drill is much the same on devices such as the Google Pixel and the Samsung Galaxy. Press and hold the key you want, then slide your finger to select the appropriate character.

Make the keyboard a mouse or trackpad

On iPhone.We typically try to tap on the screen in the exact spot that we want to insert a cursor. That can be tricky. To place the insertion point more precisely, you can turn your device’s keyboard into a trackpad. With the keyboard already visible on the screen, press down on the spacebar until the letters and other characters on the keys disappear. You can then drag your finger across the keyboard to make it act like a trackpad or mouse.

On Android. The operation is similar on a Galaxy. Press down on the spacebar until Cursor control appears. As with the iPhone, drag your finger across the entire keyboard area to move the cursor.

It works a bit differently on Pixel. Gently glide your finger along the spacebar to move the cursor, being careful not to press down too hard. Unlike on iPhone and Galaxy, you must limit your finger-slides to the area within the spacebar, not across the entire keyboard.

Text replacement shortcuts

Many of us have gotten used to typing on the relatively small keyboards on phones. You may also appreciate that phones often predict the next words based on the few characters you type, without your having to type additional characters to finish the word. And yeah, I know it doesn’t always get this right. In general, though, if you’re looking to speed things up, the fewer words or letters you have to bang out, the better, at least in theory.

On iPhone. A Text Replacement feature on iPhones enables you to type a few characters and have the phone spit out a longer word or phrase you have in mind. For instance, tapping out omw and then pressing Enter spits out “On my way,” a shortcut Apple sets up by default. But you can customize your own shortcuts, as I did. For example, I’ve set things up so that typing ecb spells out the byline you see at the top of this column.

To create such shortcuts on iPhone, launch Settings | General | Keyboard | Text Replacement | +. Then you can enter the Phrase and Shortcut in the fields provided to expand the word or phrase as you type. Press Save when you are done. Tap Edit to alter any of these shortcuts after the fact. If you actually want to type the keystrokes omw or others without expanding into the longer phrase, after tapping the + and entering the phrase, leave the Shortcut field blank.

On Android. On a Galaxy, when a keyboard is on the screen, tap the gear icon for Settings to open Samsung Keyboard Settings. Scroll to Text shortcuts to set them up for frequently used phrases. For instance, if you type email, the expanded phrase might expand to yourname@youremailprovider.com.

On Pixel, tap the gear icon on the keyboard toolbar to summon Settings. Then tap Dictionary | Personal dictionary and choose English (US) or any other preferred language on the phone. Tap the + in the upper right-hand corner of the display, and type in the word and optional shortcut.

Bonus tip: Custom typing for people using physical keyboards with the phone

If you have certain physical disabilities that require you to use an external Bluetooth keyboard with your iPhone, check out the custom accessibility features in Settings | Accessibility | Keyboards & Typing, which, depending on your specific condition, may make typing easier. These include Key Repeat, a feature that determines how long you must press and hold a key before it starts repeating characters.

Another feature here, Sticky Keys, lets you set modifier keys without holding them down, which can be useful if you have to press multiple keys simultaneously. The idea is that pressing each key separately has the same effect as pressing multiple keys at once.

Say you need to press Command + C to copy selected text. When Sticky Keys is enabled, first press the Command key and release it, then press the C key.

Finally, a Slow Keys tool lets you adjust the time interval between pressing a key and the function it activates. The default when Slow Keys is on is .30 seconds; press the – or + switches to alter the delay.

For similar features on a Samsung Galaxy, start at Settings | Accessibility | Interaction and dexterity | Mouse and physical keyboard.

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The key takeaways were created with the assistance of generative AI. An AARP editor reviewed and refined the content for accuracy and clarity.       

Edward C. Baig covers technology and other consumer topics. He previously worked for USA Today, BusinessWeek, U.S. News & World Report and Fortune. He is the author of Macs for Dummies and coauthor of iPhone for Dummies and iPad for Dummies. Follow him on LinkedIn, Threads and X (formerly known as Twitter).                   