Strange iPadOS diacritic character selection behavior

Question

Level 1

4 points

Strange iPadOS diacritic character selection behavior

In previous iPadOS versions diacritic character selection was possible by long pressing the button and moving the finger to select accented letters or alternatives.

In iPadOS 26 the „default” character is selected (for example ç in French, ć in Polish and č in Czech) and moving the finger selects a different character - the order is different for each language, some characters like Ł (under L button) have to be selected manually (even though there’s no other option there) and this whole thing seems super messy and a pain to get used to. Is there a way to turn this off and make it behave similar to what happens in macos or previous versions of iPadOS?

Posted on Nov 12, 2025 3:03 PM

Reply

Answer 1

MichalB Author

Level 1

4 points

Nov 12, 2025 5:53 PM in response to sberman

Thank you for your input! Now it makes even less sense - you, using US English keyboard, have Ł selected by default, and I have to swipe up to use that particular letter even though I use it quite frequently. The thing that bugs me the most is that all other accented letters work differently. And using bilingual english/polish keyboard does not solve the issue

Reply

Answer 2

sberman

Level 10

272,292 points

Nov 12, 2025 5:42 PM in response to MichalB

MichalB wrote:

some characters like Ł (under L button) have to be selected manually (even though there’s no other option there)

Apparently this varies by language. I am using U.S. English.

Reply