If you communicate with family overseas, study a foreign language, or frequently type documents requiring specialized characters, relying solely on the default English iPad keyboard is a frustrating experience. Typing Spanish accents or Japanese characters using an English layout is incredibly tedious. Fortunately, Apple allows you to install multiple different language layouts directly into the iPad’s system software, enabling you to switch your entire on-screen keyboard from English to French, Arabic, or Korean with a single tap of a button.
How to Add a New Keyboard Language
You can add dozens of different language layouts to your iPad. Adding a language does not download a separate app; it simply unlocks an existing feature built into iOS.
- Open the Settings app on your iPad.
- In the left-hand sidebar menu, tap on General.
- In the main window on the right, scroll down and tap on Keyboard.
- At the very top of the next screen, tap on Keyboards. (It will display a number indicating how many keyboards you currently have installed).
- Tap Add New Keyboard…
- Scroll through the alphabetical list and tap on the language you want to install (e.g., Spanish (Latin America)).
The new language will instantly appear in your list of active keyboards.
How to Switch Between Keyboards While Typing
Once you have installed a secondary language, you can switch back and forth between them seamlessly inside any app—Messages, Safari, or Microsoft Word.
- Open an app where you can type (like Notes) and tap the screen so the iPad’s virtual keyboard pops up from the bottom.
- Look at the bottom-left corner of the keyboard, right next to the spacebar and the “123” number key. You will see a new icon that looks like a Globe.
- Tap the Globe icon once. The entire keyboard layout will instantly swap to the next language on your list (for example, the spacebar will now say “espacio” instead of “space”). Tap it again to switch back.
- Press and hold the Globe icon to open a small popup menu. This menu lists all your installed keyboards, allowing you to select exactly which language you want to use without having to cycle through them one by one.
How to Remove a Keyboard
If you no longer need a language layout and want to stop accidentally switching to it while typing, you can easily remove it from your device.
Go back to Settings > General > Keyboard > Keyboards. Tap the Edit button in the top-right corner of the screen. Tap the red minus (–) circle next to the language you want to remove, then tap the red Delete button that slides in from the right. Finally, tap Done.