Clicks Keyboard for iPhone

The Clicks Keyboard case for iPhone[/caption]The problem to be solved is that I often type show notes when out walking, and the soft keyboard is fiddly when you’re not sitting still. For years I just tolerated it, and even scoffed at keyboard cases, but a few months ago the https://www.clicks.tech was released, and reviewers I trust gave it surprisingly good reviews. Initially it was US only so the whim passed by, but just as the international release was announced, John Gruber mentioned that even after a few months he was still loving his, insisting it was not just a gimmick. OK, that did it, I ordered one (bright yellow founders edition for my iPhone 15 Pro Max)!

The core content of this entire review was written on the Click while out walking!

Core Features

This is a keyboard on a flexible rubber case that goes right around the phone. It has BlackBerry-style keys with no numbers row and the bare minimum of keys beyond the 26 letters. The keys are round, the home keys have little nubbins for touch typists, the keys make a quiet but distinct mechanical click, and they feel robust and solid. The keys are even backlit!

If you grew up on a BlackBerry with a physical keyboard you’ll feel right at home with a 123 key to enable a third meaning for each letter key. The letter key by itself is its lowercase incarnation, shift with a letter gives uppercase, and the 123 key with a letter gives the digit or punctuation symbol shown on the key’s upper-left corner.

There’s a nice cutout for the camera with a little lip to protect the lens, and there are hardware overlays rather than cutouts for the phone’s buttons.

The non-letter keys we do get are (anticlockwise from the top left):
– shift
– The 123 key
– The globe button to change language if you have multiple installed (doubles as a toggle for the backlight)
– cmd
– A (relatively) big space bar
– tab
– A key to toggle the soft keyboard
– A dictation button
– return
– backspace

The case has a male USB-C connector that the phone slots into, so no Bluetooth faffing about, it just works!

There is an app, but you don’t need it to use the keyboard, just to adjust the settings like the backlight level and timeout. Speaking of battery, using the case does drain the iPhone a little, but not dramatically.

First Impressions & Thoughts

This section was written within the first hour of use on the Clicks.

• The packaging is very Apple — white, product photo dominates, uncluttered, and easy to open
• The onboarding is great — scan a QR code you just can’t miss that walks you through app install. The app then walks you through safe insertion and removal, and gives a really simple tutorial for those who never used blackberries (like me!)
• The idea of having two modifier keys took a little getting used to, but only a little.
• Having a cmd key rocks!!!
  • cmd + h for ‘home’ to swipe up and go to the spring board works great
  • cmd + space for search is so useful to me
  • I love having they usual cut, copy & paste shortcuts on my phone ❤️
• Having a tab key is great for outlining apps
• Always having a return key is great for messaging and social media apps (no more using the number KB for that)
• Space to scroll reading views is nice
• 🙁 early pain points
  • the first unpleasant thing I noticed is just how much I use the ‘hold space’ technique to move my cursor on the soft keyboard, and that can’t work with a hardware keyboard. I don’t notice it with the Magic Keyboard on my iPad because it has cursor keys — the Click does not 😕
  • when a symbol is not on the Click you have to bring up the soft keyboard. Very quickly missed + and # (the key labeled # on the Click gives £ when the phone in EN UK)
  • you always need the soft KB for emoji 😢— worse, you have to use the soft KB to search, typing on the hard KB dismisses the soft one (usually a feature)
• Once, and only once, having NL and EN input enabled on my phone somehow caused the click to flip to an AZERTY layout. Hitting the globe icon on the Click fixed it, but when i tried to switch it intentionally I couldn’t!

Considered Opinion

I’m writing this months later, and while I still use and like the Clicks, I’ve found the boundaries of where it makes life better and worse. Basically it’s great for first drafts, terrible for fine edits. If it had arrow keys it would be great for both, but it doesn’t so it just isn’t! As the old Flemish saying goes “if my cat was a cow I could milk it by the stove” 🙂

It has been granted a permanent spot on the shelf right next to the front door where all my exercise stuff lives, and when I think I might want to do some long-form writing I slip it into a leg pocket of my cargo pants. It is big, it does stick out, but it’s bottom-heavy so it never falls out.

I think this is a product that sits in a very small niche. It’s absolutely no ‘must have’, but if you need to write a lot of text on an iPhone, it really is very ‘nice to have’.

Finally, to give you a sense of scale, Allison snapped this screenshot of me demonstrating that it really is as big as my head 🙂