Enable the keyboard
- Install and open Split Keyboard.
- Choose General → Keyboard → Keyboards.
- Tap Add New Keyboard, then select Split Keyboard.
- Hold the globe in a text field and choose Split Keyboard.
Leave “Allow Full Access” disabled.
Typing languages
Tap the language key to switch. Hold it to manage languages.
Your languages, within reach.
Hold a letter for accents, or tap a suggestion that adds them for you.
Suggestions
Between words the bar predicts the next one. Tap a suggestion to insert it, or to replace the word you are typing or the one the cursor is in. Space fixes clear typos, and Delete right after undoes the fix. Hold the language key to turn suggestions, auto-correction or learning off, or to reset learned words.
If the keyboard does not appear
Check that Split Keyboard is enabled in Settings. Hold the globe to select it. Reopen the affected app; if necessary, remove the keyboard from Settings and add it again.
Does it work everywhere?
It works in apps that allow third-party keyboards. Password and phone fields use Apple’s system keyboard.
Some apps use the system keyboard
If Split Keyboard works in Notes but not another app, that app may have disabled custom keyboards.
Rotation and narrow windows
The keyboard adapts to rotation and window size. Narrow windows use a compact unified layout. Dismiss and reopen the keyboard if the layout does not update.
Acknowledgements
Suggestions use word frequencies from wordfreq by Robyn Speer, built from Wikipedia, OpenSubtitles, SUBTLEX by Marc Brysbaert et al., the Leeds Internet Corpus, ParaCrawl and Google Books Ngrams, and the LDNOOBW list of offensive words. Predictions count which words follow which in Wikipedia, by Wikipedia contributors, and in sentences from Tatoeba, by Tatoeba contributors. The word data is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, the Tatoeba data under CC BY 2.0 FR and the list under CC BY 4.0, whatever the App Store’s terms: github.com/rspeer/wordfreq, wikipedia.org, tatoeba.org, github.com/LDNOOBW.
Contact support
Include the app version and build number, iPad model, iPadOS version, affected app, and steps to reproduce the issue.