As mentioned yesterday, not many people know that Google Keyboard has settings that you can tweak and today we’re going to start diving into these various options.
There are multiple areas within the Google Keyboard section and you may have already explored around since I recommended it yesterday. If not, then we’re going to take our first look into this area together today. I thought about breaking up these features into different posts as I felt that it would help those who are using Google to search for these types of features.
I may do that at a later time but I changed my mind on it for now.
So instead, we’re going to look into the different sections of the Google Keyboard settings as a whole and today we’re going to start with the Advanced Settings section. There are a handful of different features that can be tweaked from here so lets see how to access the Advanced Settings section first.
Google Keyboard Advanced Settings
- Launch the Settings Application
- Scroll Down and Then Tap on the ‘Language & Input’ Option
- Look in the ‘Keyboard & Input Methods’ Section
- Tap on Google Keyboard(you may have to have it enabled/selected first)
- Tap on ‘Advanced’ at the Bottom
This just what I showed you yesterday, except that we’re going into the Advanced section once we have accessed the Settings of the Google Keyboard. So let’s take a look at what each of these settings do and how they can effect your interactions with Google Keyboard.
Disable Google Keyboard Key Popup Delay
Each time you press a key in Google Keyboard, you will probably notice that there is a huge pop-up that appears to show you exactly which letter you pressed. This is really handy because it can be a way for you to catch typos before you complete a word. Some people enjoy this feature but others do not and Google actually puts a little delay in the amount of time that it takes for that pop-up to go away. To disable this delay, simply dive into the Advanced settings as I talked about earlier and then change this setting to No Delay.
Adjust Google Keyboard Vibration Duration
There’s a way for users to completely disable the vibration of the Google Keyboard key presses altogether, and I’ll show you how to do this when we talk about the Preferences section of the Google Keyboard settings. For those who actually enjoy the tactile feedback of key presses, then you might be happy to see that you can adjust this duration from within the Advanced Settings section of Google Keyboard. As shown here, you can adjust the slider to the right to increase the duration, or bring it all the way to the left to set it to the system defaults.
Adjust Google Keyboard Long Press Delay
This is one of my favorite Android keyboard customization settings because I tend to be a fast typer and have always disliked being forced to wait for the long press pop-up before I can continue on. For example, every time that I need to set SwiftKey back up again, I always go in and adjust the long press delay setting to 100ms. This means that I only have to wait 100ms after tapping and holding down on a keyboard button before the long press option comes up. Since the number pad in embedded in the top row of the Google Keyboard(and SwiftKey), lowering this option will lessen the amount of time that you have to tap and hold on one of those keys before the number option appears.
Disable Google Keyboard Statistical Data
Google uses statistical data for the Google Keyboard to help improve things like fixing typos better, knowing which words to suggest more and just overall usage data with how you use the keyboard. I can only imagine the things that Android engineers take into account when analyzing this data. Some of you might be paranoid about what data is being sent back to Google but I can assure you that it is anonymized and can’t be used to identify you at all. Then there are those that want to minimize battery usage or even reduce any feature that could have an impact on performance.
Technically this feature shouldn’t have any negligible affect on these, but I can understand those who might feel otherwise. Either way, these types of features can always be disabled and this is where you disable this feature. Sadly, this feature is enabled by default so you’ll have to go into the Advanced Settings in order to disable it.
Adjust Keypress Sound Volume
There’s another feature in here that lets you adjust the key press sound volume but as you can see from my initial screenshot, it is grayed out on my device. This is because my Nexus 5 is on silent mode so there isn’t any volume to adjust here. However, if you don’t have your device on silent then you will be able to adjust this volume right here. This will let you make the ‘tick’ sounds that you hear when typing louder or quieter. Again, there are some out there who might like it one way other the other so thankfully Google has given us the option to set it to our preferred level.
There’s a lot more to go into here, but I believe we are done looking in the Advanced Settings section. As always, if you have a question about one of these options then please don’t hesitate to leave a comment at the bottom of this article.
