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Arrow / Cursor Keys: ALL of them! ▲▼◄ ► ↑ ↓ ← →

I really wonder: why doesn’t anyone of the keyboard app producers implement a full set of arrow keys? I can’t believe I’m the only person in the world who misses this.

Please PadKeys, be the first app to implement arrow keys!

They even could be all four side by side. There’s space enough in the bottom row to do it.

Thanks a lot in the name of all users!

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Christian shared this idea  ·   ·  Report…  ·  Admin →
not for now  ·  AdminTypefinity (Support, Typefinity) responded  · 

As mentioned in the comments, we are unable to provide this functionality at the moment due to iOS limitations. We encourage interested parties to send feedback to Apple on this matter.

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  • AdminTypefinity (Support, Typefinity) commented  ·   ·  Report

    Hi Allan,

    Sadly nothing has changed. Apple seems not to like third-party keyboards, and doesn't even fix bugs relating to them, let alone introduce new features. Here you can see the programming interface we have. All we get is this "- adjustTextPositionByCharacterOffset:" function, which allows us to move forward or backward by some number of characters.

    https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uitextdocumentproxy

    Unchanged since iOS 8. :-(

    If you hold the space bar you can enter "drag to move" mode where if you drag up or down we'll fake it by guessing how many characters are in a line of text and moving that number forward or backward. As you can see, it doesn't work well enough to justify putting cursor up or down keys on the keyboard, which is why you don't see them on the App Store screenshots.

    (Edited by admin)
  • Allan Zimmermann commented  ·   ·  Report

    I bought this "app" purely to get up⁄down key.
    And now I see that was not possible.
    Can you please check if this is possible now, and if yes, consider adding that?

  • AdminTypefinity (Support, Typefinity) commented  ·   ·  Report

    Note that apps like Termius that provide up/down "keys" in their toolbar or that provide their own keyboard usable only in that app have access to different, much richer iOS programming interfaces than third-party keyboards do, unfortunately. Up/down cursor, modifier keys, and the dictation key are all examples we'd love to provide but can't.

    This makes us sad. Please send Apple feedback (as we have) asking them to change this.

  • Freemen Muaddib commented  ·   ·  Report

    Please add "Home, End" and "PageUp, PageDown" keys. Being able to go to the end or the beginning of a line is a must have for programmers.
    Also, PageUp and PageDown are needed to quickly navigate the code.

  • Chris commented  ·   ·  Report

    I too find it a great pity that up and down cursor keys are not included with what so far for me is a vast improvement on the ios default keyboard

  • Allen commented  ·   ·  Report

    Could you please add Up & Down Arrow keys? That way we could go up and down lines of text with the press of a key.

    To make room for them could you please remove the 'forward delete' key (but allow us to shift+delete to it instead, i.e. holding 'shift' + 'delete' = forward delete), and relocate the keyboard-away button.

    P.S. If you combine this with the suggestion entitled "Create a taller keyboard (landscape & portrait) for iPad", you would get the Ultimate iPad keyboard!
    e.g. look at the image: "5_iPad_landscape_tall_w_updown_keys.png"

  • AdminTypefinity (Support, Typefinity) commented  ·   ·  Report

    @David Ligon: Prompt is an app, whereas PadKeys is a keyboard extension. Apps have direct access to the text area they want to move around in, and the full set of programming functions it provides. Whereas keyboard extensions are sandboxed and isolated from the actual UI components due to Apple regarding them as a greater security risk (since keyboards can be used across all apps). We're given the ability to insert text and move left and right, as well as send a backspace character. That's it. And we get information on the characters before and after the cursor to some distance out, as strings. Nothing about line breaks.

    Some third-party keyboards try to implement up and down by guessing the number of characters on a typical iPhone screen and moving that many to the left or right to get to the next line. We've opted to avoid this due to the inconsistent results. We've put in an enhancement request to Apple to grant third-party keyboards access to up and down movement functions, but there has been no response. I'd recommend putting in a request yourself, since the more users they hear from wanting this functionality, the better the chances they will listen.

  • David Ligon commented  ·   ·  Report

    I use Prompt and they have implemented this. Not sure why you can't.

  • AdminTypefinity (Support, Typefinity) commented  ·   ·  Report

    This is exactly it. We started out with a plan to do just this, but Apple does not provide "move up" or "move down" in their API that we can use. Nor does it even let us move the cursor to the previous or next row with the left/right API.

    I would encourage you to pass your request on to Apple, for example at: http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipad.html

    We have already done so ourselves, but the more folks they hear it from, the better the chance they'll implement it.

  • Christian commented  ·   ·  Report

    I come to believe, that it’s due to some iOS restrictions that no one does this. Too bad!

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