Back when the Apple introduced the iPhone with its paltry 3.5” screen, it made sense to give the iPhone a small three row keyboard. Adding a fourth row would take up way too much room.
Now that the latest iPhone has a screen that’s almost twice as long diagonally (6.5”), it’ll be nice if Apple at least gave us the option for a fourth row with number and let that match the standard QWERTY layout.
You can install custom keyboards. Most of them are not relevant to you, but trawling through the app store, I saw at least a couple that add number rows. Here’s one:
In addition to Slyder, you might have a look at Typefinity, Swiftkey, Bullkey, Number Row Keyboard, Fleksy, My Keyboard Custom Keyboard.
The Google Gboard keyboard has a “Show number row” setting, which when on shows a tiny numeral above the top row of keys. The way it works, I think, is that you can press on one of those keys and flick up to select the number.
Is there such an option that adds nothing but a number row to the standard Apple keyboard? I dread lots of config or any stability issues related to something as fundamental as a KB. And then I guess there’s the issue of security — are those KBs from people with a solid reputation? Naively, I’d imagine a KB is something that could siphon off any entries I’d make.
I can’t answer those questions, although they are valid. I was just trawling through the available keyboards.
I’m sure some 3rd-party keyboards are privacy nightmares because they advertise they’re hooked up to AI. And Google has their own as well.
Plus security nightmares. Every keyboard app requires access to all your keystrokes, all the time. I can’t imagine open source apps offer much protection either because keyboards aren’t exactly a sexy category for developers and code reviewers.
There’s no way to modify Apple’s own keyboard. I think Apple places a number of restrictions on what 3rd party keyboard apps are allowed to do to help preserve security, one of which is that they cannot normally be used in password fields.