Keys & typing basics

Key presses, long-press popups, shift behavior, the number row and key previews.

Every key on WM Keyboard does more than the letter printed on it: a tap commits that letter, but a hold opens accents, digits, symbols, or (on six letters you can arm yourself) an editing shortcut. This page covers what a single key does under your finger, before you get into gestures that move across keys.

Tapping and long-pressing a key

WM KeyboardKey pressKey popup

While a key is held, its character floats in a bubble above your finger (the key popup), so you can confirm what you hit before you let go. It’s on by default, and by default it grows upward from the pressed key itself rather than floating with a gap (the Popup on key toggle). It lingers for a minimum of 150 ms even on a fast tap, so a quick press still leaves a readable flash, and it’s hidden by default on number, phone, and date/time keypads, including a numeric PIN field, where echoing each digit large enough to read over your shoulder isn’t wanted.

Hold a key past the long-press delay to open its alternates.

Hold past the long-press delay (300 ms by default) and, if the key has any, its alternates pop up: Q–P lead with digits 1–0, A–L and Z–M lead with a symbol (@, #, $, &…), and a handful of letters also carry accented forms after that first alternate: e, u, i, o after their digit (e → è é ê ë, u → ù ú û ü, and so on), and a, s, z, c, n after their symbol. The first alternate doubles as a small corner hint on the key itself (the Long-press hints toggle, on by default), so you can see what a hold will lead with before you commit to it.

A few more long-press behaviors live under the same Long-press shortcuts settings group:

WM KeyboardKey pressLong-press shortcuts

All accents on long-press (off by default) adds each Latin letter’s complete accent set to its long-press popup, on top of whatever the built-in list already shows: the digit or symbol stays, alongside every accent.
Hold ?123 for numpad (off by default) makes long-pressing the symbols key open a full numeric keypad panel over the current field; a quick tap still just switches to the symbols layer as usual.
Currency keys lets you reorder or replace the glyphs the $ key’s popup offers (৳ € £ ¥ ₹ ₿ by default); put your own currency first, space-separated.

Shift, caps lock, and auto-capitalization

WM KeyboardKey pressTiming

Shift cycles through three states. From off, one tap arms a one-shot Shift that capitalizes only the next letter and then reverts on its own. A second tap that lands within the caps-lock double-tap window (350 ms by default, adjustable 150–600 ms) locks Caps Lock instead. From either Shift or Caps Lock, a single tap that isn’t a fast double-tap turns it back off. You don’t need to double-tap again to get out of caps lock; one plain tap exits it.

Shift off, one-shot Shift, and Caps Lock — the three states the key cycles through. — Shift off, one-shot Shift, and Caps Lock: the three states the key cycles through.

Auto-capitalization arms Shift for you at the start of a sentence, but only when three things line up: Auto-capitalize is on (the default), the field is a plain text field rather than a structured keypad, and the active language’s script actually has letter case. Bengali, for instance, doesn’t, so auto-capitalize never fires while typing it. It re-checks after every sentence-ending mark (., !, ?, ।) as well as when you move the cursor or switch fields, and it never touches Caps Lock: an all-caps statement you locked in stays locked in regardless of what auto-capitalize would otherwise do.

WM KeyboardTypingAutomatic corrections

That toggle lives on the Typing screen rather than here; see Autocorrect for the rest of the automatic-corrections group it sits in.

Hold a letter for a quick edit

WM KeyboardKey pressLong-press shortcuts

Six letters can each be armed to run an editing command on long-press instead of opening their accent popup: A selects all, C copies, X cuts, V pastes, Z undoes, Y redoes. Every one of the six is off by default, and you turn on the ones you want individually. Once a letter’s shortcut is on, it fully replaces that letter’s accent popup on long-press; the two never combine, so hold C either shows 'çć or copies, never both. Copy and cut select everything first if nothing is already selected, so a bare hold C on an untouched field copies the whole field.

The Enter key

WM KeyboardTypingEnter key

The key’s icon and behavior follow whatever the focused field asks for: Search, Send, Go, Next, Previous, or Done, each with its own icon, or a plain newline when the field doesn’t specify. When an app supplies its own label instead of a standard action (“Reply”, “Post”), the key draws that text directly rather than an icon.

Shift + Enter types a newline (off by default) lets you press Shift then Enter (or hold Shift on a physical keyboard) to force a line break in a field that would otherwise send or search on Enter. The key itself changes to the newline symbol while Shift is armed, so it never promises a Send it isn’t about to do. Only a Shift you pressed yourself counts here: the one-shot Shift auto-capitalize arms at the start of a message is ignored, so the first line of a chat message still sends normally, and Caps Lock is ignored too.

Number row and numerals

WM KeyboardLayout & sizeNumber row

Number row (off by default) adds a dedicated 1–0 row above the letters, so digits don’t need a long-press. Turning it on drops the digit that would otherwise be the top row’s first long-press alternate, since it’s redundant once the row is there. A few sub-settings appear once it’s on: Number row height (32–100 dp), Symbols on shift (off by default: holding Shift swaps the row to = \ < > [ ] { } | ~ instead of digits), and Number row in symbols (on by default: keeps the digit row visible on the ?123 layer too; the symbols layer’s own second page still carries its own arrow and comparison symbols regardless of this toggle).

WM KeyboardLayout & sizeNumerals

Separately, numeral system controls which glyphs the number row and keypad show, per language: Arabic can display ٠-٩ while English next to it stays on 0-9. Every language defaults to Auto, which follows that language’s own convention (Arabic → Arabic-Indic, Persian/Urdu → Persian, Bengali → Bengali, Devanagari-script languages → Devanagari, everything else → Latin); you can override it per language. That’s set on each language’s own screen, not here (see Languages). What this screen’s Type native digits in setting controls is separate: whether those native glyphs are what actually gets committed when you type them. Text fields (the default) keeps plain 0-9 committed in number, phone, and date/time fields even if a language’s display digits are non-Latin, while typing the native glyphs everywhere else; Everywhere commits the native glyphs unconditionally; Display only always types plain ASCII digits no matter what’s shown on the keys.

Smart key-hit detection

WM KeyboardTypingSuggestions

Smart key-hit detection (off by default) quietly widens a key’s touch target toward whichever letter the dictionary predicts is likely to come next as you type a word, so a tap that lands just inside a neighboring key can still commit the letter you meant, but only near the shared edge; a deliberate press in the middle of a key is never changed. It only affects the letters layer, and it needs Suggestions turned on to have anything to predict from. See Autocorrect for how it fits alongside autocorrect as a second, earlier line of defense against typos.

Multi-touch and key repeat

Every finger on the keyboard is tracked independently, so pressing a second key before releasing the first works correctly: both keys register, whether that’s rollover typing across the letters or two fast taps landing on the very same key. ⌫ and Space are the keys that auto-repeat on a hold on the default layout: after the long-press delay, they fire again every key repeat interval (50 ms by default, adjustable 20–200 ms) for as long as you hold them, and held backspace stops on its own once there’s nothing left to delete. A forward-delete key (⌦) repeats the same way if you’ve added one to a custom layout; no built-in layout places it, and a physical keyboard’s own Delete-forward key goes straight to the system instead of through this engine. Every other key long-presses into its popup or shortcut instead of repeating.

WM KeyboardAccessibilityTouch

If you’ve turned on Ignore repeated presses (off by default) to filter out a hand tremor’s accidental double-taps, auto-repeat deliberately bypasses it: the software repeat is already deterministic, so filtering it would just cap how fast delete or space could go.

Backspace also has its own drag-to-delete-whole-words gesture, on by default, that’s separate from this hold-and-repeat: see Gestures for how it works.

Options

WM KeyboardKey press

Setting	Default
Key popup	On
Popup on key	On
Popup on number pads	Off
Minimum / maximum popup duration	150 ms / 750 ms
Popup font size	×1.00
Popup height	110 dp
Long-press delay	300 ms (150–700 ms)
Key repeat interval	50 ms (20–200 ms)
Caps-lock double-tap	350 ms (150–600 ms)
Long-press hints	On
All accents on long-press	Off
Hold ?123 for numpad	Off
Currency keys	৳ € £ ¥ ₹ ₿
Hold A/C/X/V/Z/Y for select all/copy/cut/paste/undo/redo	Off (each)

Reach the full screen from the home grid’s Key press tile, or search “Key press” in settings search. This table covers the Key popup, Timing, and Long-press shortcuts groups; the same screen’s Haptic feedback and Key press sound groups are covered on Sound & vibration. For the exhaustive, field-by-field breakdown see Key press settings.

A handful of related settings live elsewhere:

Auto-capitalize — WM KeyboardTypingAutomatic corrections — on by default.
Smart key-hit detection, Shift + Enter types a newline (WM KeyboardTypingSuggestions and WM KeyboardTypingEnter key) — both off by default.
Swipe to delete words — WM KeyboardTypingBackspace — on by default.
Number row, numeral commit scope — WM KeyboardLayout & sizeNumber row and WM KeyboardLayout & sizeNumerals — off / “Text fields” by default. Full breakdown at Layout & size settings.
Numeral system per language — WM KeyboardLanguages(a language)Numerals — Auto by default. See Languages.
Ignore repeated presses — WM KeyboardAccessibilityTouch — off by default. Also see Accessibility.

Details & edge cases

A hold-shortcut on A/C/X/V/Z/Y fully replaces that letter’s accent popup, not adds to it. With “Hold C to copy” on, c no longer offers 'çć on long-press at all.
Exiting Caps Lock only takes one tap. The double-tap window only matters going into Caps Lock; any single tap while Shift or Caps Lock is already active turns it off.
The Enter key never lies about what it’s about to do. With Shift + Enter’s newline override active, the key visibly redraws to the newline symbol first; it doesn’t silently swap behavior behind an unchanged icon.
The long-press delay is duplicated in two places. It’s a Key press → Timing slider (150–700 ms) and again, framed for hand tremor, under Accessibility → Touch (150–800 ms, a slightly wider range); both sliders move the same underlying setting.
Number row height is independent of key height. Shrinking the digit row doesn’t touch the letter keys below it, so it’s a way to get quick number access without paying for a full extra row of keyboard height.
Ignore repeated presses only filters repeats of the same key. Typing two different keys quickly is never blocked, so it can be raised without slowing down normal typing.

See Gestures for spacebar swipes, cursor control, and the backspace word-delete drag; Hardware keyboards for how physical Ctrl/Shift shortcuts differ from the on-screen ones on this page; and Sound & vibration for the rest of what the Key press screen controls.