How to Enable a Flicking Gesture in the iOS 7 Keyboard for Alternative Keys (Video)
Custom keyboards may be coming in iOS 8, but for those of us without time machines, jailbreak tweaks come to the rescue. This one in particular called AltKeyboard and costing $2.99 from the Cydia store, allows you to use flicking to make typing faster. You can flick up to get alternate keys (hence the name I’d assume) and down to get capital letters (reducing the need for the shift key). In addition to this flicking fun, you can also swipe from the sides to move the cursor, swipe on enter to dismiss an autosuggestion, swipe on the shift key to look up a highlighted word in the dictionary, and even use the spacebar to highlight, copy and paste. Check it out.
I. Jailbreak your iPhone/iPad
1. To do this procedure you must be jailbroken. If you aren’t, you can head to our How to Jailbreak iOS 7.1.2 (the latest version at the time of writing this). Once done with that procedure and you have Cydia installed, head back here to continue.
II. Install AltKeyboard 2
1. Open Cydia.
2. Tap Search in the bottom right corner.
3. Type in AltKeyboard 2.
4. Tap on AltKeyboard 2 when it shows up.
5. Tap Purchase at the top right and follow the prompts to login and purchase using your preferred method.
6. Tap Close when you’ve paid.
7. Tap Install where Purchase used to be.
8. Tap Restart.
III. Use AltKeyboard 2
1. Go to Settings > AltKeyboard and adjust the options as you see fit.
2. The basic features are:
- Swipe up to select the alternative character for the key.
- Swipe down to enter a capitalized version of the letter.
- Swipe in from the edges to move the cursor within the text field.
- Highlight a word and swipe up on the shift key to look up it’s definition in the dictionary.
- Swipe up on the enter key to dismiss an autocorrection suggestion.
Feel like it’s making you faster at typing? Or just making more MiSTakeS?
Head to our iOS Jailbreaking How To’s for more tweaks to further customize your jailbroken device.
