HalfKeyboard

Support · a half-height keyboard for iPhone and iPad

What it's about: the standard iOS keyboard takes up almost half the screen. HalfKeyboard takes about two thirds of that, so you keep seeing what you're typing into. Everything is adjustable, and nothing leaves your device.

Turning the keyboard on

HalfKeyboard is a system keyboard. After installing, you switch it on once in the iOS Settings — the app itself is just the house the keyboard lives in.

Open the HalfKeyboard app at least once.
Go to Settings → General → Keyboard → Keyboards → Add New Keyboard.
Choose HalfKeyboard under Third-Party Keyboards.
Tap into any text field and hold the globe key 🌐 to switch to HalfKeyboard.

The app has a practice field, so you can try it right away without leaving the app. You don't need to allow full access — the keyboard doesn't ask for it and works fully without it.

How it works

Swipe down for the second character

Swipe down on a letter key to get the character above it: q becomes 1, a becomes @, z becomes %. On the period key, a swipe down gives a comma. You'll rarely need the number layer.

Space bar as a trackpad

Hold the space bar and drag to move the cursor through your text.

Settings

Height, font size, key spacing, bottom row thickness, typeface, the number row, swipe-down and word suggestions: all with a slider or a switch. You'll find them both in the app and in the keyboard itself, so you see the effect right away.

Tap the practice field in the app, then move a slider: the keyboard adjusts instantly, while you watch. It doesn't work the other way round — iOS doesn't allow a keyboard without full access to write anything back to the app, and we deliberately don't ask for that access. If you move a slider in the app, that setting wins.

On iPhone: hold the layer key (123 / ABC) bottom left for the menu with Standard, Emoji and Settings.
On iPad: tap ⇄ to cycle through the layouts (Standard → Numpad → Split → Settings), or hold ⇄ to pick one directly.

Emoji

Tap the 😀 key for the emoji board: categories at the bottom and a clock tab that fills with what you used last. Back to the letters with ABC.

Word suggestions

A suggestion bar in Dutch, English or German, or automatic. The word list lives inside the app: nothing is looked up, sent or remembered.

Extra on iPad

On iPad you get two extra layouts: a numeric pad on the right, and a split layout with the pad in the middle and a space bar under each thumb.

If something doesn't work

Problem	Solution
HalfKeyboard isn't in the list of keyboards	Open the app once first, then look in Settings again.
The keyboard is full height after all	Use 🌐 to switch to another keyboard and back. The height is sometimes only picked up the second time.
A setting in the app doesn't change the keyboard	The keyboard has to be on screen to follow along. Tap into a text field and move the slider again, or close the field and open it again.
I'm missing a character	Try swiping down on the nearest letter, or switch to the `123` board.
What I set in the keyboard doesn't show up in the app	That's how it has to be: settings travel one way, from the app to the keyboard. See Settings above.
My iPhone and iPad settings differ	That's right: settings are stored locally only and aren't synced.

Privacy

HalfKeyboard collects nothing, sends nothing and has no internet connection. What you type stays on your device. The full privacy policy explains why that's not a promise but a technical boundary.

Contact

Questions, found a bug, or an idea for a next version? Feel free to email keyboard@dickhartog.dev. I read everything.