There are four different ways to enter text on an Apple Watch Series 7, including QuickPath, and each has its own unique benefits. With an Apple Watch that has cellular capability, it's possible to leave the iPhone at home and still respond to messages and SMS texts from the wrist. Entering text while using such a small screen presents a challenge, but Apple offers a variety of solutions that should satisfy most.

The Apple Watch is an excellent health tracker, with its ECG app, sleep monitoring, heart rate, and blood oxygen sensors. It also helps keep track of progress for fitness, identifying workouts, counting steps, and distance to provide extra motivation. The Apple Watch can also provide directions, respond to questions, answer calls and reply to texts. With such a small screen, it originally seemed impractical to include a tiny keyboard and yet, that is exactly what happened with the newest Apple Watch.

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The Watch Series 7 has a 20-percent larger screen and that might have been the detail that tipped the scale and inspired Apple to put a regular, though tiny, keyboard on its wearable. While it could be difficult to strike a particular key, autocorrect might be able to work out what word was meant even if it looks incorrect while typing. However, that isn't the best way to use the new keyboard. Instead, Apple's QuickPath allows the user to slide a finger over the letters that make up a word. This will usually result in much better accuracy since it provides watchOS with more information to work with as it checks for the most likely word based on the path that the finger travels.

Three More Text Entry Options

Apple Watch iPhone Keyboard Text Entry Gboard

It's also possible to enter text for the Apple Watch by using another Apple device, such as an iPhone. Just start typing on the watch and then tap the notification that appears on an iPhone or iPad that's logged in with the same Apple ID. This will then allow the larger keyboard to be used for typing or swiping words and symbols that will appear on the Apple Watch screen. Being able to enter accented letters and special characters is one of the best uses for this feature, however, it also allows access to third-party iPhone keyboards. The third option is voice input and this is possibly the easiest way to enter a large amount of text. Simply speak the words to type and let the Watch Series 7 fill them in on the screen.

The final text entry method, Scribble, allows drawing letters, numbers, and some symbols on the face of the Apple Watch, one at a time to spell out a word as if hand printing on paper. While this is fun the first few times, it can quickly become tiresome when there is a need for more than a word or two. Overall, Apple makes text entry on the Apple Watch Series 7 as convenient as it can be for such a small device and provides enough options to find the one that works best in different situations.

Next: The Best iPhone Keyboard Is Still Made By Google

Source: Apple 1, 2