Earlier today, I shared my thoughts on custom keyboards in iOS 8 and how I’ve struggled to use a custom keyboard as my primary input method on the iPhone and iPad.

I wrote:

All these limitations can be easily overcome by setting preferences in each custom keyboard and accepting the fact that iOS will often default to the system keyboard due to privacy concerns. And that is absolutely fine: I appreciate the secure model that Apple built to protect customer data as much possible and I like that Internet access needs to be granted manually to custom keyboards.

But from a user’s perspective, this lack of deep system integration, little trade-offs, and increased friction add up over time when trying to use a general-purpose custom keyboard as your only keyboard. At least in my experience, I’ve found it easier to switch to simpler custom keyboards when I needed them rather than keyboards meant to be used all the time.

In addition to the limitations I mentioned in my article, custom keyboards have taken a while to get used to for two main reasons: performance and novelty.

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iOS 8 is, by any measure, a big update. A lot of it is refinement to last year’s drastic design overhaul, but there are also a lot of notable new features. Sitting amongst those refinements and big new features are little nuggets of delight in which Apple has designed or implemented something (whether it be a feature, design flourish or a shortcut) that you might not notice until one day you stumble upon it accidentally.

Just like we have in the past few years, we like to find those little gems that come with every brand new version of iOS. So in this post, you’ll find dozens and dozens of tips, tricks, and details of iOS 8 that we’ve collected throughout the summer since the first beta release of iOS 8.

For more iOS 8 coverage, check out our news hub.

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