One of the challenges of switching to full touchscreen devices for me was the learning curve of the virtual keyboard. Sure, when you use one language and you don’t “txt spk,” the on-screen keyboards found on many modern Android smartphones can be quite a joy.

There is less friction while typing on a screen compared to pressing physical buttons, and they take care of most typos thanks to autocorrect — or predictive input. Problems arise, however, once you start combining multiple languages, frequent abbreviations, technical jargon and the necessity to use a transliterated language than involves lots of numbers and letters mixed together. That’s when you lose your sanity and decide to turn off autocorrect because it is simply trying too hard to correct everything. Thankfully, there’s a way to write on the same keyboard, with and without autocorrect, without the need to switch the setting every time. Here’s how.

Transliterated Arabic and autocorrect don’t mix!

This tip relies on using a mix of swiping — also known as gesture typing or tracing — and regular typing, so you have to make sure that you are familiar with both input methods for writing on your phone. You also have to be using a keyboard that allows swiping, like Google Keyboard or Swiftkey. The idea here is to:

• disable autocorrect and use regular touch typing whenever you want to write words that aren’t usually found in dictionaries — like abbreviations, technical terms, or transliterated languages
• use swiping when you write more traditional text that has to be autocorrected for spelling mistakes.

Because the concept of swiping for text entry relies on guessing what you approximately traced with your finger, the keyboard will predict the words with their accurate spelling, whether you traced them right or not and, most importantly, despite autocorrect being disabled. For example, swiping “convenence” will yield “convenience”, and you don’t have to worry about “adress” versus “address” when you swipe.

In order to switch the correct options on and off, here’s what you need to do if you’re using the Google Keyboard:

• Go to your phone’s Settings
• Look for “Language and Input”
• Click on the gear icon next to Google Keyboard
• Scroll down to Auto-correction, click it and set it to Off.
• Make sure “Show correction suggestions” is set to Always show
• Tick the box to Enable gesture typing.

Google Keyboard settings

If you’re using Swiftkey, here are the steps:

• Go to your phone’s Settings
• Look for “Language and Input”
• Click on the gear icon next to Swiftkey
• In Input Methods, enable Flow
• In Advanced, click on “Spacebar completion mode” and set it to always insert a space.

Swiftkey settings

Once you have made these settings changes, you can go back to your keyboard and enjoy a simultaneous way of writing with autocorrect (swiping) and without it (touch typing) without having to ever alter any settings again. Also, keep in mind that even though this trick was only tested on Google Keyboard and Swiftkey, the same principle should logically apply to other keyboards that support swiping like Swype, TouchPal or SlideIt.

It’s a simple workaround but it makes all the difference in the world. Autocorrect used to annoy me because it always intruded when I didn’t need it, fixing “thg” into “the” or attempting to find english words that resembled my transliterated arabic ones. Now, I don’t worry about any of that. I just type all my weird words without an issue, but I can swipe at any moment for a fast and errorless way of writing English.

Do you have any keyboard tricks that have improved your typing experience on touchscreen keyboards? Share them with us in the comments below.