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Can you connect a bluetooth keyboard to an Apple Watch?
- Thread starter TSE
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I don't believe that that is currently possible. Are you aware you can use your phone as a keyboard input for the watch?
Yes but I was thinking how cool it would be to have a little keyboard accessory for my watch so I can leave my phone at home. The only thing that's difficult with the watch is typing.
Yes it works well but I live in NYC and don't always want what I am watching on youtube, what music I'm listening to, or what I'm sending my wife to be out in the open.
You'd leave the phone at home but take a keyboard?
Phones quite a bit bigger than a pocketable keyboard accessory if one existed.
Does anyone do that though? My first thought was "Oh cool! I need to remember this!"
But once I thought it through, I'm puzzled as to why anyone would bother to use their watch like a tiny external monitor for their phone when they could just use the phone directly.
If we could hook up the Apple Watch to an Apple Magic Keyboard, mouse, and Studio display that would be pretty awesome. Come on Apple, let’s get this going!
Valid point. It is such an obscure ability I doubt many use it with any regularity.
This is the very very far future...maybe. Phone, desktop, and watch, all in one.
Imagine if Apple released an accessory that slid in like an apple watch band, but it was aluminum slab about three inches long and the width of the watch with a tactile keyboard. That would be the perfect dumbphone.
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Well, watch form factor does has its advantages compared to iPhone size. Strapping onto your wrist would be one of them as you can’t really strap your phone onto your wrist and be secure and comfortable. But then the watch itself probably doesn’t need to be an extension of the phone. Apple wants their watch to be an extension of their iPhone though. I’m not saying I don’t like it but it comes with significant battery life disadvantages.
What I meant was that typing on your phone while looking at the output on your watch doesn't make sense because once you bring your phone into it, why bother connecting it to your watch as an external keyboard? Even if you're using it as a virtual keyboard in landscape orientation, you still have more leftover space on the phone to work with than if you only used your phone to type, but kept your eyes on the watch.
It'd just be an awkward setup for no gain.
Leaving the iPhone at home so don’t have to carry it. Bringing the keyboard instead. Umm…
I don't think that's as impractical as it sounds. There are already some very interesting compact keyboards form factors out there. Now with 3D printing and off the shelf electronic modules being miniaturized and readily available, the DIY enthusiast keyboard people have come up with some pretty interesting form factors. I'd be very surprised if someone doesn't already have some prototype of a one handed chorded keyboard that you can hold like a salt shaker.
I would be interested in something like that. With available software algorithms, you could even produce an ultra-compact one handed full QWERTY style keyboard with as few as 16 keys that any proficient touch typist could learn in a few days.
i have been pleasantly surprised at how well you can "swipe type" on the Watch's keyboard. when it doesn't quite recognize my pattern it's list of candidate words generally always contains the word i was trying to type.
which reminds me of T9. i wonder if there is a T9 Watch app...
and having a micro/mini keyboard for the Watch sounds like a great idea.
which reminds me of T9. i wonder if there is a T9 Watch app...
and having a micro/mini keyboard for the Watch sounds like a great idea.
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Why? It's interesting as a puzzle (and puzzles are good), but beyond being a puzzle to solve, I can't see how this would be a more convenient option.
The most obvious way to do it is to keep you phone in your pocket, backpack etc, have a small bluetooth keyboard connected to the phone, and have the phone redirect the keyboard input to the watch. But you still have to have your phone on your person, even if you are not using your phone directly.
The most obvious way to do it without using a phone, is to have some type of mini keyboard that does "text-to-speech", so type then play the audio to the watch.
Or just talk to the phone. The speech to text dictation on an Apple Watch is very good (in English, anyway).
If it works for you, great, but, for me at least, a smartwatch is a means of reducing screen time, rather than increasing it. I have an Apple Watch so that I look at the screen of my phone less, but I don't want to look at my watch screen for longer than I already do. An AirPods / Watch combo helps a lot in that respect.
Disclaimer - I have a larger sized AW10, so the biggest screen of any Apple Watch so far, but I have big fingers, so I find both the Watch's onscreen keyboard and "drawing letters" unusably slow. I have the same problem with mini keyboards ( unless they are only "slightly mini", if you know what I mean) Dictation all the way.
The most obvious way to do it is to keep you phone in your pocket, backpack etc, have a small bluetooth keyboard connected to the phone, and have the phone redirect the keyboard input to the watch. But you still have to have your phone on your person, even if you are not using your phone directly.
The most obvious way to do it without using a phone, is to have some type of mini keyboard that does "text-to-speech", so type then play the audio to the watch.
Or just talk to the phone. The speech to text dictation on an Apple Watch is very good (in English, anyway).
If it works for you, great, but, for me at least, a smartwatch is a means of reducing screen time, rather than increasing it. I have an Apple Watch so that I look at the screen of my phone less, but I don't want to look at my watch screen for longer than I already do. An AirPods / Watch combo helps a lot in that respect.
Disclaimer - I have a larger sized AW10, so the biggest screen of any Apple Watch so far, but I have big fingers, so I find both the Watch's onscreen keyboard and "drawing letters" unusably slow. I have the same problem with mini keyboards ( unless they are only "slightly mini", if you know what I mean) Dictation all the way.
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Oh now look I'd add an extra 'very' in there if I were you, possibly two. Siri can't even play an on-device playlist without you being online and/or unlocking your device first, so she'd need a Ritalin and a nap if you did this to her 😄 😄 😄 If she really threw a tantrum they'd have to rename her Karen.
LOL, what's left of RIM will not be happy with that keyboard form factor.One can always sell the AW and may get something like this.
We can't be too far off from a one handed input device that's something like brass knuckles except with sensors and haptics that detect finger movement to produce text.
When I was suffering from hand pain, I always wanted one of these Matias Half Keyboards that functioned like a full keyboard, but only with one hand. I'm thinking of something like that, but in an even more unorthodox form factor. I may very well have splurged on one of those, except I needed a right hand version and they only make a left sided one.