iPad:
On-screen keyboard and
Quick Settings
This short, animated course looks at how to use your iPad's on-screen keyboard, including typing letters, numbers, punctuation, and symbols, plus changing the case from lower- to upper-case, and back again. You will also learn how to adjust your iPad's screen brightness using the handy Control Centre (also called the Quick Settings).
Watch the animation by pressing the Play button below, or click on the handy chapters icon in the video playbar (it is the third icon from the right) to go straight to the information you want to see, such as how to:
- reveal the on-screen keyboard
- use common keyboard functions
- change the keyboard case
- type numbers, punctuation, and symbols
- access the Control Centre (Quick Settings)
- adjust the screen brightness
- close the Control Centre (Quick Settings).
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Transcript
Welcome to the "iPad: On-screen keyboard and Quick Settings" course. You'll learn how to use the on-screen keyboard on your iPad, and how to adjust the brightness of the screen using the iPad's Control Centre.
If your iPad has a physical Home button, some of the steps might be slightly different but you can still follow along.
Unlike a desktop or laptop computer, an iPad doesn't come with a physical keyboard attached. Instead, an on-screen keyboard automatically appears whenever you tap in a text-entry field on the screen of your iPad.
Let's have a look at how that works, by searching for something on the web. First, open the iPad's web browser by tapping the Safari app. You might see the web page you last visited or an empty search web page. The web page fills the whole screen and there's no keyboard visible. To make the keyboard appear, tap in any text field.
For this demonstration, we'll tap in the address bar at the top of the Safari screen and perform a web search. The web address in the address bar is highlighted blue, which means that it is selected. To delete the address, you can tap the delete key at the top right of the keyboard, or you can tap the cross to the right of the Address bar. Or you could also just start typing to delete the address and replace it with new text. Let's do this by typing the words "weather today" using the on-screen keyboard.
To insert a space between words, tap the long space bar at the bottom of the keyboard, and then type the next word.
To perform a simple web search, tap the go key on the right of the keyboard. The keyboard disappears and you can see the search results on the whole screen. To get the keyboard back, tap in any text field.
For this demonstration, we'll tap in the Address bar again.
Just like on a physical computer keyboard, the letters on the keys are lowercase, so when you tap a key, you'll type a lowercase letter.
To type a single uppercase letter, tap either of the Shift keys to reveal the uppercase keyboard. Now, just tap a letter to type it in uppercase. After you've typed a single letter, the keyboard will return to lowercase.
If you want to type more than a single letter in uppercase, tap the Caps lock key. The keyboard will change to uppercase once more. Type some letters, and you'll notice that, this time, the keyboard is staying uppercase.
To return to the lowercase keyboard, tap the caps lock key once more.
If your iPad does not have a Caps lock key, double tap either of the Shift arrows so that a line appears beneath the arrow, and all the letters on the keyboard appear in uppercase. To turn off uppercase, tap the shift arrow once more.
If your iPad model has a large screen, it might display numbers and some punctuation keys on the main on-screen keyboard.
Other iPad models require you to tap a special key to reveal the numbers, punctuation and symbols keyboard. This key is below the shift key, and contains a full stop, question mark, 1, 2 and 3. Tap this key to reveal the numbers, punctuation and symbols keyboard. Tap any of these keys, to add numbers, punctuation or symbols.
To return to the main keyboard that lets you type letters, tap the key that contains ABC.
Now, swipe up from the bottom of the screen, to return to the Home screen.
To finish up, let's look at how to adjust the brightness of your screen from the Control Centre. The Control Centre collects many of your iPad's commonly used features in one place, so you don't need to search for them. It's a handy feature, so let's look at how you can make use of it. You can open the Control Centre any time, regardless of which app or website you have open. For this demonstration, we'll open it from the Home screen.
To open the Control Centre on your iPad, swipe down from the top right of the screen. The swipe should always begin with your finger in the bezel, which is the area that surrounds the screen.
There are a few useful settings here, so it's worth exploring them later.
From the Control Centre, look for the large slider containing a sun icon. This controls the screen brightness. Place your finger on the top of the white section and slide it down to dim the screen. This is a handy way to save battery power. Slide your finger up to increase brightness. This can help make the screen easier to read in bright sunshine. When you find the brightness level that suits you, take your finger off to set it.
To close the Control Centre and return to the screen you were last looking at, tap anywhere outside of the icon area.
You have now completed the course and should know how to use the keyboard and how to adjust the screen brightness of your iPad.
If you're unsure about any steps, you can rewind the video, or click the chapter headings to jump to the start of a chapter. If you're ready to move on, there are many other courses to explore on Be Connected!