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  • Using an On-Screen Keyboard

    Posted by Community Member on January 3, 2019 at 1:30 pm

    I’ve started using the on-screen keyboard on my Mom’s MacBook while I’m doing podcasts, and it definitely has advantages. It’s great for typing up short emails and messages, naming documents, looking up something, etc. However, it’s very slow and not ideal for writing, at least for me. I want to be able to type fast.

    For those of you who use an on-screen keyboard on your computer, is there a way to install word prediction with it to make the process faster? Typing one letter at a time at a slow pace is just too time-consuming for me, other than for things like emails and such. I’d love to hear other people’s experiences with this.

    Community Member replied 3 Members · 4 Replies
  • 4 Replies
  • Community Member

    Member

    Both my laptop and the one on my iPad have predictive on-screen keyboards by default.  Makes it so much easier.  Not sure how you would turn it on if you don’t. Have you checked in the Accessibility settings?

    • Community Member

      Member

      My iPad has it, but I’ll check on that for my Mom’s laptop. I’m looking to get a new computer for myself soon, and I’ll ask the people at Best Buy about it as well. Thanks.

  • Community Member

    Deleted User

    It’s completely different from an On Screen Keyboard, but I highly recommend a (free and downloadable) program called Dasher! It seems like the craziest thing at first, and I completely blew it off after trying it the first time, but when I went back several months (maybe a year) later, it quickly became my favorite typing method!!! I like the On Screen Keyboard for anything less than a few words, and it’s great for typing passwords and things, but Dasher is probably 10 faster (now that I have a lot of experience with it) than an On Screen Keyboard could ever be for me, and probably 3 times faster than when I type with my eye-gaze in Optikey. I promise, no one ever sees me using it and say “Oh! That’s awesome! I could do that.”… It’s usually something more along the lines of “What on Earth are you doing?”, “Is that a game?”, or “Doesn’t that make you dizzy?!?”… It definitely takes practice, but it also means that I can type something like this in about 5 minutes and not feel like my hand is dead afterward.

    • Community Member

      Member

      Thanks! I’ll definitely look into this. So how does it differ from a traditional on-screen keyboard? Do you still use a mouse or something similar with it to type?

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