If you have spent enough time with your iPad or iPhone, you will discover that there isn’t an indent or Tab key on the default iOS keyboard. Most people do not need to indent or outdent, so they never really notice that a key is missing. And while the tab key is missing on the keyboard, there are various ways you can still indent and outdent on an iPad.
How To Indent On Ipad In Google Docs
Google Docs lets you indent using the Tab key while also enabling you to create custom indents for a paragraph. You can achieve the latter by doing the following:
- First, highlight the paragraph you intend to indent
- Select Format, the Align & Indent, before selecting the Indentation options
- You can then select the First Line under the Special Indent option
- Choose your unique indentation value, and you are done
Using The Tab Key In The Notes
The Notes app has increased indent and decreased indent functionality, making taking notes a lot easier. Compared to a computer with various physical keys, an iPad has four hardware buttons, none of which can be used for typing. The simple formatting tools you might find easily on your PC or Mac can be buried beneath an avalanche of settings and menus.
Fortunately, in the Apple Notes app, you need to open the contextual menu by long-pressing or double-tapping a word. Alternatively, you could tap the cursor. The next step would be selecting the Aa icon, the second icon from the left on the menu row.
This will provide formatting options such as title, bold, italics, underlines, bullet points, and of course, indentation. Depending on the original Format of the selected text, you should be able to increase indent or decrease indent text.
Using The App’s In-Built Text Feature
Certain Apple apps, such as the Apple Notes app, Pages, and Mail, all come with inbuilt indent text options. Furthermore, there are third-party apps such as Microsoft Office and Google Docs. Follow the steps below to do that:
You can edit an existing email, document, or note or create a new one. You will then see a toolbar with various options located above the keyboard. Depending on the third-party app, the toolbar can look different and be arranged differently. The toolbar can also appear on third-party keyboards such as SwiftKey.
- Tap the Aa icon
- Tap the indent text button using the right arrow. The indent text button is typically located next to the left arrow
You should note that you cannot add indentations to email subject lines, note titles, and other similar fields. Generally, you will only see the increase indent option in the main text field.
Considering that every third-party iPad app is different with its own design language, the indent text icon might look different. Nevertheless, the icon is something you can seamlessly figure out. The Pages App, for instance, has a tiny button with a plus icon and a tiny button with five lines.
A nifty indent tab key can be handy in third-party iPad apps; however, if your app doesn’t have the indent feature, you can use the dictation and text replacement feature to achieve the same aim.
Thinking about using an iPad with cellular for business? Discover the pros and cons.
Inserting The Tab Character Via A Text Shortcut
This is another useful way to learn how to indent on iPad. To do this, you will need to first create a shortcut for your tab character on your Mac. This shortcut will act as a text replacement on your iPad.
You need to use a Mac because if you attempt to create a text replacement by directly using the tab on your iPad keyboard, it will bring up an error. This error, however, is not present when you create the shortcut using your Mac.
You have to follow the steps below to create a text replacement on your Mac to act as a tabular key:
- First, head over to System Preferences
- Select Keyboard and click Text
- Click the “+” icon to add a new text replacement
- Call it whatever name you choose in the Replace box. You can call it “Tab”
- In the With box, press the Option + Control + Tab keys together to create a tab
- Press enter to save your new text replacement
When you press Option + Control + Tab together, you create a space and discover that the cursor moves slightly to the right. This text replacement shortcut and phrase instantly syncs to your iPad so long as it uses the same Apple ID. After this process, you should be able to use this text replacement on your iPad to increase the indent.
To achieve this on your iPad, you must open the document and head over to the paragraph you want to add the tab character. Type the name of the shortcut in that area and once the text replacement prompt comes up, tap the space key to add it.
It is imperative to note that while creating a line indent using this method is not as seamless as other methods on this list, it is still functional. Furthermore, it can be a lot more effective than the dictation method.
Learn how to set up your iPad for business use here.
Inserting A Tab Key Using Dictation
To add a tab to your existing text, you first need to open the document where you intend to insert the tab. After this, you need to enable your keyboard if it isn’t active already.
- The next step is to move to the point in the paragraph where you want to add the tab
- Select the microphone button located on your iOS keyboard to enable dictation
- Say “Tab key,” and this will insert a tab character into your Microsoft word document
