The iPad keyboard can quickly enter over a hundred characters, if you know all the tricks. A new video from Apple shows how to type numbers without switching keyboards. It also demonstrates how to access letters with accents. Plus, it shows how to use the keyboard as a trackpad. 

English doesn’t use accented characters, but plenty of other languages do. On an iPad, just press and hold a letter to bring up a small window with all the possible accented options for that letter. Slide the finger up to select one.

Watch the newest video to see this iPad keyboard tip in action:

Numbers too

It used to be too hard to enter numbers and symbols with an iPad’s on-screen keyboard, but Apple came up with a clever work-around in iOS 11. Punctuation marks, symbols, and numbers were added in grey above the letters. To type one of these secondary symbols, press and hold on the appropriate letter, then move your finger down slightly.

Apple’s video shows how this works.

Keyboard = trackpad

Most people probably aren’t aware that the iPad keyboard also functions as a trackpad. Just press and move around two fingers on the keyboard to control an on-screen cursor. This only works on the keyboard, not anywhere else on the screen.

The new video demos this if there are any questions.

This is just one of the videos released this week showing how to better use an iPad. There was one on working with two applications at once. Another was on using an Apple Pencil in the Notes app and another on Apple Pencil and screenshots.