The iPhone 6 Plus Gets A One-Handed Keyboard App, And It’s Glorious

While I came around to the iPhone 6 Plus and its unique allure, as told in a post from a couple of days ago, Apple’s big smartphone still isn’t the easiest to use when typing one-handed. Specifically, it’s tricky to get to the requisite punctuation needed to properly express oneself. A new app, helpfully called “One Handed Keyboard,” eliminates this annoyance, with a simple software trick made possible by iOS 8’s support for third-party keyboards.

The app is the product of Calgary developer Stonelight Pictures, and puts a keyboard that’s the same size as the one found on the iPhone 5s on the iPhone 6 or 6 Plus, with a simple, large button that can shift the keyboard either left or right depending on your preferences, or just which hand you happen to be holding the device with at any given time. The software keyboard can also be themed with various color options, as well as translucency to hint at what’s behind, though changing these requires giving the keyboard full access.

By default, the app will switch between light and dark themes depending on what’s most appropriate for the app in question. It also has a basic auto-correct feature, which isn’t quite as powerful as Apple’s own predictive text in iOS 8, but which is good enough to get the job done, especially given the increased accuracy you’ll have when typing one-handed.

One Handed Keyboard is probably little more than an opportunistic side project by an enterprise little one-man studio (which isn’t to discredit its cleverness, or it utility) but it’s a $1.99 I’m happy to spend to get these features. It still has some kinks (it defaults to a left-handed typing position after sleep and wake) but it’s solid enough that it makes me wonder whether or not this might make for a useful core system feature addition as a companion to iOS 8’s Touch Assist down the road.