Scrivener’s extended keyboard row on iPad and iPhone gives you easy access to keys for punctuation, formatting, and navigation.
Scrivener for iPad and iPhone can be used to write, edit, revise, and compile your work, though it doesn’t quite have the comprehensive feature set of Scrivener for Mac or Windows. Because of the limited screen space and the touch interface of iOS and iPadOS, Scrivener has an extended keyboard row allowing you to access punctuation and special characters, formatting commands, and navigation keys. This keyboard row can save you a lot of time.
In this article, we discuss how the extended keyboard row works and how you can customize it so the features you use often are always available.
What is the extended keyboard row?
On the small screen of an iPhone, it can be hard to access many features that are common on a computer. Writers need more than just the basic keys: they need to be able to access punctuation beyond the easily accessible period and comma; formatting options can be difficult to access on a mobile device; and navigation is generally limited to tapping or dragging on the screen.
If you write on an iPad and use an external keyboard, you have access to many or most of these options – notably since Scrivener offers a full suite of keyboard shortcuts as it does on computers – but some features are still not easy to access.
The extended keyboard row is an extra row of keys that displays above the keyboard in Scrivener on iPad and iPhone when you’re editing a document. Whenever the keyboard displays, these extra keys are visible. These keys are slightly different on the iPhone and iPad because of screen size: some options available elsewhere on the iPad appear as keys in the extended keyboard row on the iPhone.
Since each writer has their own needs and conventions, this extended keyboard row is fully customizable.
Using the extended keyboard row
The extended keyboard row displays automatically above the keyboard when you’re in edit mode in any text file. Here it is on the iPhone:
And here’s the extended keyboard row on an iPad, in both portrait and landscape orientations:
The extended keyboard row has three sets of buttons, and you can switch among them by swiping in either direction.
As you move through the three keyboard rows, you can see that the rows have three sets of keys:
- Punctuation and special characters, such as quotes, apostrophes, colons, semicolons, etc.
- Navigation keys that let you move the cursor up and down, move it by word, and use a forward delete key. See below to learn about the Selection Mode key.
- Formatting keys on iPhone, such as bold, italic, alignment, highlighting, and more. The rightmost key, which looks like a paintbrush, opens a formatting palette. See below for more on this feature.
- Document management keys on iPad, such as keys to insert links, comments, and footnotes, or internal links to other files in a project; a paragraph alignment key; and highlight and text color keys.
Selection Mode
The Selection Mode key at the left of the extended keyboard row turns on a selection feature, and using the navigation keys allows you to extend the selection. This is practical if you’re editing or revising a text and want to select words or phrases easily.
When you engage this mode, the navigation keys extend the selection by character or by word. In the example below, I placed the cursor before the word “night,” turned on Selection Mode, then tapped the Back a Word key twice to select the two words.
With a longer text, you can use the up- and down-arrow keys to select multiple lines, and selecting using these keys can be more accurate than using touch.
The formatting palette on iPhone
The extended keyboard row on the iPhone has a formatting paintbrush key to the right of one of its rows. The iPad’s extended keyboard row doesn’t have this key; because of the extra space on the tablet, there’s a formatting paintbrush button in the toolbar at the top of the screen that offers the same features.
Tap this key to display the formatting palette:
You can see that this palette gives you access to basic formatting, such as font and style settings, alignment, paragraph indents, and line spacing.
Customize the extended keyboard row
You can customize any key on the extended keyboard row. If you tap and hold a key, Scrivener displays a palette with options from each of the three keyboard row types. Select a key, then tap Done to save your changes.
You can combine character, formatting, and navigation shortcuts on any keyboard row. If you have a set of keys you use often, you can put them all on one keyboard row so you don’t have to swipe.
Hide the extended keyboard row
You may not want to view the extended keyboard row. You might want to hide it to have a bit more space to view your documents on an iPhone, or you may be using an external keyboard on an iPad, so you don’t need these extra keys.
To hide the extended keyboard row, go to the top level of any project, then tap the gear icon to open the project’s settings. Tap Show App Settings; this opens the Scrivener settings in the iPhone’s or iPad’s Settings app. Tap Editor, then toggle off Keyboard Row.
On iPad, you can show or hide the extended keyboard row by tapping this key just above the Delete key on the keyboard.
Scrivener’s extended keyboard row compensates for the smaller screen size and limited options on the iPhone and iPad. If you work a lot on these devices, consider customizing this with the features you use often to save time.
Kirk McElhearn is a writer, podcaster, and photographer. He is the author of Take Control of Scrivener, and host of the podcast Write Now with Scrivener. He also offers one-to-one Scrivener coaching.