From the course: Help Yourself: Tech Tips Weekly

Working with the touch keyboard

From the course: Help Yourself: Tech Tips Weekly

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Working with the touch keyboard

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- [Instructor] In tablet mode, the touch keyboard is available as an alternative form of laptop text input. After all in tablet mode, there shouldn't be a keyboard available. You still need to type. To enter tablet mode, press the Windows + A keyboard shortcut or swipe in from the far right edge of the screen. Choose tablet mode. Now you can tap the keyboard icon in the notification area to bring up the onscreen keyboard or summon any app where text input is required, and the keyboard appears like this. To change the keyboard layout, you tap the keyboard settings icon. Here you see the variety, and at the bottom, well actually in the middle, you can choose whether to have the detached keyboard or a keyboard that goes from edge to edge. Here's a very tiny version of the keyboard, which might work if the laptop were held in a vertical orientation. I call this the thumb keyboard because you can, if you're good, type by using your thumbs on either hand, similar to the way people type on a phone with their left or right thumbs. Now, I didn't use my thumbs for that, I kind of cheated, I used my fingers. And then we can choose this keyboard, which I call the luxury keyboard. Now on this keyboard, as with other keyboards, the keys are sticky. So you can press the shift key and release it to then type a capital letter, like that. Or the control key is also sticky. So Control + Z to undo. The fn key allows you to access the function keys. The Omega key allows you to access special symbols. Tap the ABC key to return back to the normal keyboard. And the emoji keyboard displays all kinds of symbols and fun stuff, which you can put in your important business letters, especially when you type in tablet mode. Finally, you can choose pen input, which allows you to use a digital stylist or the tip of your finger to input text. Now, if you don't have a pen or digital stylist, you may need to use the settings app in order to activate finger input mode. Tap the keyboard settings icon, and then this settings icon at the bottom, and place a check mark in the box, right in the handwriting panel with your fingertip. Tap the back icon to return to the Notepad, And now you can type. Try a comma. Oh no, it became a slash. Okay, well I'm new at this. There is your comma. And type in this, there, period, and now I'll try handwriting. Wow, that worked I'm impressed! If your laptop has a touchscreen specifically, if that screen can be removed, or twisted around in some way to hide the keyboard, you can use the touch keyboard to generate text input when text input is required, and the variety is quite amazing.

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