I love my Bluetooth keyboard

Summary

I recently went on a ten day trip to China where I didn’t take my computer. I still wanted the ability to take notes quickly, so I bought a Bluetooth keyboard to use with my phone. Boy do I love it. There are basically three reasons. 1. Texting my friends on a keyboard is so much nicer I hear all my Mac friends laughing at me. We’ve had that for years, Kai. Still, it’s nice. I love being able to type quickly and use copy/paste. And it’s nice not to have to lug my computer around either — or buy a Mac. It’s not all good, though. Typing exacerbates my tendency to be verbose in text chains. 2. Typing on the notes app is like a typewriter Sometimes, I just need to sit down and write the darn thing. I’ve historically accomplished this by locking myself into a room with a notebook and a pen and handwriting the draft, even if it is tens of pages. This takes a while, and I’ve often wondered whether I should buy a typewriter. Typing on a phone in the notes app gets me 80% of the way to the typewriter ideal. While typing on a keyboard into a phone, it's more difficult to access distractions. The phone screen itself is too far away to touch, so it's hard to switch away from work. Entertainment is less satisfying on a small screen anyways. Even better, I still have some of the nice editing features of a word processor — I can skip around, copy/paste, and delete things easily. (This post was drafted on a phone with my Bluetooth keyboard). 3. Navigating my phone via keyboard shortcuts is a fun game There’s a setting to let a keyboard control the phone. Go to Settings > Accessibility Keyboards & Typing > Full Keyboard Access and turn the setting on. This lets me use the keyboard to switch between apps, select different text areas, and even navigate within apps. The effect is a bit janky, but I honestly really like it. I’ve always been a keyboard shortcuts fiend, and it’s nice not to have to touch my phone to switch between apps. The most frequent command I use? Cmd + space to brin...