Tips and Tricks - Adding International Keyboards

For my first tips and tricks segment, I would like to show you how to add more than the standard English keyboard that you find on our iOS devices. And this method applies to iPod Touch, iPhone and the iPad.

There are, in fact, lots of different ways to input all forms of text and emoticons into your iDevices, including using diction that is quite similar to using Siri.

As you can see from the picture on the right, there is more than one way to input your content in many different languages and syntaxes.

To do this, you simply go to your Settings icon and look for General.

Scroll downwards until you see Keyboard, and tapping on it will bring you to the Keyboard settings screen as such.

Keyboard Settings Screen

One of the options you will find there is International Keyboards, and by default you should only get one. Tap on it will further get you into the International Keyboard options.

International Keyboard Options

From here, if you want to add other international keyboards, just tap on the Add New Keyboard and you will be given a selection of different language keyboard choices.

The one of note for us may be the Chinese keyboards that employs a stroke method of inputting your Chinese characters, which is quite handy for those not good with hanyu pinyin.

It will probably work better on the iPad with its larger screen estate, but for myself, I tend to use both as sometimes I may know of a Chinese character but not know its pinyin and vice versa.

You can add in as many keyboards as you like, and activate the different keyboards, simply go to the typing screen and tap on the globe button on the bottom left hand corner and you will be able to toggle through the different activated keyboards.

I hope you will find this feature useful the next time you need to send a text or email.