I found it
I have been trying to use the iPad as a laptop replacement for years. However, the behaviour of a connected keyboard has always been a source of frustration. Namely, the “space” key would often not act to insert a “space” character, but rather as “activate”. Which means, in many situation, it would trigger whatever button on the top/top-left of the screen instead; the “Back” button in a browser, for example.
Anyway, I finally found where to change this behaviour in the Settings app, and thought I should share it. The setting is in:
Accessibility > Keyboards > Full Keyboard Access > Command > Activate
Personally, I replaced it with cmd+enter; but you can do whatever you want there.
3 replies
Oh this is interesting.
I’ve used an external keyboard for a while now and never had any issues with keys activating things I didn’t want, but I did just check that accessibility setting and I have that turned off so that makes sense.
Space activates the highlighted action, tab moves the highlighted action to the next button, esc activates the cancel/negative action, and return activates the filled-in action. Been this way on Mac for decades, although recently you have to enable it as it’s off by default.
Yeah. It is on by default for my iPad. And, boi, almost all third-party apps that I use does not work with that.