The iOS keyboard offers some hidden keyboard shortcuts designed to make your life easier. Granted, many people have a hard time adopting to the tiny on-screen virtual keyboard, but those of you that take to it like a fish to water will really benefit from these keyboard shortcuts.

Symbol Typing Shortcut

If you are typing and want to quickly add a period, comma, question mark, exclamation point, apostrophe, or basically any other kind of symbol or punctuation mark shown on the screen below simply do the following:

Press and hold the 123 button and then, without removing your finger from the screen, drag it over to the symbol you want to insert and let go. The symbol will appear within what you were previously typing and you'll return to the letter keyboard shown below. Now finish that thought you were typing and if you want to end it with a period you can use the above method or the quicker one by pressing the space bar twice.

Safari Domain Typing Shortcut

Launch Safari, press and hold the .com button, and a pop-up will launch enabling you to select .edu, .org, .us, or .net. In foreign countries, you may see different options related to your country or language.

 

Add Accents to Characters

If you are typing and want to add an accent to a character, just press and hold that letter to see your options. The example below shows the accented characters you get when pressing and holding the letter "A."

E-mail Domain Typing Shortcut

If you are typing an e-mail address while sending an e-mail (isn't that meta?) and want a quick way to insert the domain type like .com, .edu, etc. just press and hold the period to see your options.