Focus on a UI feature: Samsung keyboard tips and tricks and hidden features

The Samsung keyboard is one of the most feature-rich touch input solutions. It’s available out of the box for Galaxy smartphones and tablets, and it’s packed with customization options and useful tools. Today we are going to explore a few of these Samsung keyboard features that can help improve your experience.

Along with the Samsung keyboard offering robust proprietary functionality, the app also supports a few third-party tools, including extensions for Bitmoji and mojitok, GIF galleries through Giphy and Tenor, and more. We’ll also cover a few “hidden” features that you might not know about, so without further ado, here are some of our favorite Samsung Keyboard tools and tips and tricks.

REMARK: This guide was created using One UI 5.0 on Galaxy S22+, and some settings/options may differ or not be present in Samsung keyboard for other One UI versions.

Manage third-party Samsung keyboard extensions

To access the Samsung keyboard settings, open the Settings app on your phone, access “Executive management,” faucet “List of keyboard and default,” and select “Samsung Keyboard.” To view third-party keyboard extensions, scroll down and tap “Select third-party content to use.”

Here you can enable or disable extensions individually, including Bitmoji, Mojito, Giphy and tenor, Spotify, Google (Translation and YouTube), and Grammar, by pressing the ON or OFF toggles. Now, before you can use these third-party extensions, you need to add them to your Samsung keyboard toolbar. To do this, invoke the keyboard (for example, by creating a new document in Samsung Notes), then press the three-dot button in the upper right corner of the keyboard. Finally, drag and drop the extensions you want to the toolbar. The latter can accommodate up to 7 extensions and tools at a time.

Manage Custom Symbols in Samsung Keyboard

As you probably know, Samsung Keyboard lets you access more symbols through a small pop-up window by pressing and holding the period button. These symbols, however, can be customized to your liking. Here’s how.

As before, open the Settings application, access “Executive management,” faucet “List of keyboard and default,” and press “Samsung Keyboard.” Then, however, select “Custom Symbols.”

Here you can use the interactive preview window at the top to customize your Samsung keyboard symbols. You can select the symbol you want to remove from the preview window at the top, then tap the symbol you want to add via the keyboard at the bottom of the screen. Here is the process visualized in a screen recording:

REMARK: If you want the custom symbols popup to stay open without having to hold your thumb down on the screen, you can go to “Swipe, Touch and Comments” through the “Samsung Keyboard” the settings screen and press the “Keep the symbol panel open” to toggle ON.

Two “hidden” features of the Samsung keyboard that you might find useful

Finally, here are some tips that can elevate your Samsung keyboard user experience to a new level. The app has a few somewhat hidden gestures that can be extremely useful once you’ve added them to your repertoire.

First, you can use the spacebar to control the cursor. As you may know, swiping left and right on the spacebar switches languages ​​(assuming you have more than one). However, pressing, holding, and swiping left or right (and/or up and down) on the spacebar changes the position of the screen cursor. To use this feature, make sure “Cursor control” is selected in the “Press and hold the space bar” menu.

Second, here’s a quick tip that can help speed up your typing. You can press and hold the “Gap” key on your Samsung keyboard to convert “Going back” in “Wipe off” on the fly. Here is a quick video illustrating both the Cursor control and the Shift+Backspace functions:

What are some of your favorite Samsung keyboard features? Feel free to leave a comment below.