Since the birth of Android We have noticed many changes in the pre-installed apps. In Europe it is not very relevant because all the big brands, except Huawei, include Google applications, but that does not mean that they are all active by default. And this is important because many users never modify the predefined applications, which is why they are the most used, as in the case of Chrome.
For example, on Samsung phones, the keyboard that comes standard is the company’s own, not Gboard, which is Google’s keyboard and the one that most manufacturers have, such as Xiaomi, OPPO, Vivo or Motorola, among others. Although it can be modified and there are dozens of options in the Google Play Store, the Google keyboard is the most used as it comes by default on most mobile phones.
Although its handling is obvious, it has many optionssome of which make us see the written text more quickly, either because of the way we type or because it is not necessary to type at all. It is not necessary to know them all, but it is very likely that some of them will be useful to us when writing on our mobile.
voice dictation. The first of the functions is one of the least known. In Europe, voice messages sent in messaging applications such as WhatsApp or Telegram are very common. However, many people do not like them because it is difficult to search for information in them, sometimes they are too long…
Texts are an alternative to them, but of course, many are too lazy to write so much. Gboard has an automatic transcription system that allows you to speak on your mobile phone and the keyboard converts these words into written text. All you have to do is click on the icon that appears in the upper right corner of the keyboard interface. If this icon does not appear, you need to go to the keyboard settings (to enter, you must press and hold the comma key) and activate the “Write by voice” option.
Gboard interface
Free Android
Slide to type. Another way to write, but in a more fluid and faster way, is to do it with gestures. This is what the popular Swype keyboard offered at the time, which stood out for this function, something that ended up reaching all the keyboards of large companies, such as Gboard or Swift Key.
In the keyboard settings, there is the possibility to enable this feature in addition to other related functions. For example, you can delete a word simply by sliding your finger from right to left on the space bar. You can also make the swipe visible or not and even move the cursor between the letters of the words by slowly sliding the space bar to the left and right.
Numbers and emojis. In written communication, it is quite normal to have to write numbers, for which it is very convenient to have an additional row of keys in which they all appear. This is something that can be activated in the keyboard preferences, in Settings. The same thing happens with the emoji icon, which gives direct access to the hundreds of emoticons available without having to search for them in other sections. This feature is also activated in Preferences.
Clipboard. If in our communications we sometimes need to send certain information recurrently, such as an address or a specific text, pinning them to the clipboard allows us to avoid having to write them each time and speed up the process. To do this, you just have to write it once, select it and copy it.
Here’s how the clipboard is enabled in Gboard
Free Android
Once this is done, we go to the clipboard, which is inside the icon in the upper left corner, and open it. We hold down the text that we just copied and click on the correction option. In this way, it will not be deleted after a few hours, as is the case with the rest of the texts or screenshots that go to the clipboard during normal use of the phone.
Spell check. When we write, especially quickly, it is very likely that spelling mistakes and, above all, typographical mistakes are made. A space where it does not belong, a forgotten capital letter, a broken word … All these errors can be solved thanks to the keyboard correction function.
In the settings, in the spell check, there are many options. In addition, at the bottom of this section, we can choose Gboard as a grammar checker. If we do so, the spelling mistakes will appear underlined in red and the grammatical errors in blue, so that the correction is faster.
personal dictionary. In some areas of work and leisure, there are words that form a certain lexicon that is not the norm. But that does not mean that we want to stop using them. So that we are not corrected repeatedly, some words can be added to our personal dictionary. In fact, this is what the Settings section is called in which we can put words of any type so that Gboard understands that we are writing them on purpose and that it is not a mistake.
Gboard interface
Free Android
Suggestions. Finally, it is possible to make the Google keyboard recommend not only the words we want to type, but also stickers or emoticons. To do this, you must activate the Suggestion option in the Emojis, Stickers and GIFs section. In this section you can also activate an icon bar reserved for emojis, similar to that of numbers. If we use several, it may also be advisable to activate it.
