Tired of QWERTY? Starting with iOS 16, which was launched last month, the Apple iPhone now natively supports the 86-year-old Dvorak keyboard layout. Previously, Dvorak typists needed to install a third-party app in order to use the layout.
Dvorak uses a different key layout than the standard QWERTY layout to improve typing speed and ergonomic comfort. August Dvorak and William Deely invented the layout in 1936 after studying the shortcomings of the QWERTY typewriter keyboard, which was already 60 years old at the time.
Apple and Dvorak have an interesting history. The company first included native Dvorak support for its computers with the US model Apple IIc released in 1984. It included a dedicated “Keyboard”button that logically switched the layout between QWERTY and Dvorak, but the physical keycaps had to be reordered to fit if you needed a label reference.
Interestingly, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (“Woz”) learned Dvorak around 1993 and never looked back (he didn’t work with Dvorak on the Apple IIc, he says). In an email to Ars Technica, Woz revealed how he first learned about Dvorak. “I flew to Tokyo and launched Mavis Beacon, which teaches you how to type in Dvorak mode,” he wrote. “I spent 5 hours learning it and never looked at a QWERTY keyboard again. That’s all it took. My son has already successfully transitioned, learned Dvorak in a short time and quickly picked up the same speed as on a QWERTY keyboard. a week.”
To use Dvorak on your iPhone, first make sure you have iOS 16 or later. Then open the Settings app and go to General > Keyboard > Keyboards, then tap your language and select Dvorak from the list. The next time you open your keyboard, you’ll see a different layout with an initial string that says “AOEUIDHTNS”- just the way August Dvorak would have liked it.
It’s worth noting that Dvorak’s alleged speed improvements are associated with using 10 fingers for typing, so if you’re only learning Dvorak, you may not see any speed improvements over QWERTY when typing with two fingers, such as thumbs. However, longtime Dvorak users will probably be pleased.
“Then what I liked most about Dvořák is that when you work with your fingers, you spend less energy,” says Woz. “Since the iPhones came along, I had to resort to QWERTY, but it was no longer in my head. I’ve been typing really fast QWERTY all my life, but now it’s gone. I have to look at the letters on my iPhone.”