I love my Bluetooth keyboard — liquidbrain
liquidbrain
I love my Bluetooth keyboard
Published on May 14, 2026
I recently went on a ten day trip to China where I didn’t take my<br>computer.1 I still wanted the ability to take notes quickly, so I bought<br>a Bluetooth keyboard to use with my phone.
Boy do I love it.
There are basically three reasons.
1. Texting my friends on a keyboard is so much nicer
I hear all my Mac friends laughing at me. We’ve had that for years, Kai.
Still, it’s nice. I love being able to type quickly and use copy/paste.<br>And it’s nice not to have to lug my computer around either — or buy a<br>Mac.
It’s not all good, though. Typing exacerbates my tendency to be verbose in<br>text chains.
2. Typing on the notes app is like a typewriter
Sometimes, I just need to sit down and<br>write the darn thing. I’ve historically accomplished this by locking myself into a<br>room with a notebook and a pen and handwriting the draft, even if it is tens of pages. This takes a<br>while, and I’ve often wondered whether I should buy a typewriter.
Typing on a phone in the notes app gets me 80% of the way to the typewriter ideal.<br>While typing on a keyboard into a phone, it's more difficult to access distractions. The phone screen itself is too far away to touch, so it's hard to switch away from work. Entertainment is less satisfying on a small screen anyways.
Even better, I<br>still have some of the nice editing features of a word processor — I can<br>skip around, copy/paste, and delete things easily.
(This post was drafted on a phone with my Bluetooth keyboard).2
3. Navigating my phone via keyboard shortcuts is a fun game
There’s a setting to let a keyboard control the phone. Go to Settings ><br>Accessibility Keyboards & Typing > Full Keyboard Access and turn the<br>setting on.
This lets me use the keyboard to switch between apps, select different text<br>areas, and even navigate within apps. The effect is a bit janky, but I<br>honestly really like it. I’ve always been a keyboard shortcuts fiend, and<br>it’s nice not to have to touch my phone to switch between apps.
The most frequent command I use? Cmd + space to bring up the search<br>feature. I really wish there was an alt+tab replacement for window<br>switching in iOS. There is for iPad, but I haven’t been able to figure out<br>any workarounds on my phone. Cmd+space is almost as efficient.
This navigation combines really with copy/paste and CMD+A to select all.<br>It’s much easier to copy paste with a keyboard than using the dragging<br>selection mechanic.
Conclusion
Do I have keyboard recommendations? Not really—I just bought the Logitech<br>Pop keyboard as it was what wire cutter recommended and it was on sale. But<br>if any of this appeals to you, I’d highly recommend checking a Bluetooth<br>keyboard out!
Notes
If you’re curious for more detail on my experiences, here’s a<br>write-up I did with another person who went on the trip. ↩
Now that I'm writing this up on the computer though, I do notice that my paragraphs are shorter on the phone. I wonder if this is because paragraphs look larger when the screen is smaller, so I natuarlly want to break up the text sooner. This isn't all bad though — I find it easier to get started because the blank page is literally smaller. ↩
Thoughts? Leave a comment
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Comments
Leon<br>May 15, 2026:
You might enjoy https://www.homerow.app/ on the laptop that lets you keyboard-shortcut-ify everything.
liquidbrain<br>May 15, 2026:
Thank you! For better or for worse, I have a PC. But honestly, this is one place where PCs are probably better than Macs. I have some AutoHotKey scripts, though I need to make it more ergonomic to add more. Here's a good writeup for any other PC users: https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/ahk/.