How to always show UPPERCASE keys on your iPhone or iPad keyboard

Learn how to switch your iPhone or iPad’s onscreen keyboard to an UPPERCASE design instead of the default lowercase letters printed on each key.

Two iPhone keyboards with one showing keys in lowercase and other showing keys in uppercase

The onscreen keyboard on your iPhone and iPad uses lowercase key labels, but you can switch to an all capital design in a few easy steps. This setting doesn’t affect your actual typing. Rather, it only changes the style of key labels of the virtual keyboard.

MacBook Pro in gray showing its full keyboard

Always show UPPERCASE key labels on iPhone or iPad

To switch your keyboard style to UPPERCASE labels, go to Settings > Accessibility > Keyboards & Typing and turn off the Show Lowercase Keys switch. Open an app like Notes to check whether key labels are now printed in UPPERCASE instead of lowercase.

Show Lowercase Keys in iPhone accessibility settings

Apple warns that this setting “affects keyboards that use a Shift key to switch between uppercase and lowercase letters.” When it’s turned off, key letters will be UPPERCASE regardless of whether the Shift key is active. But when the Show Lowercase Keys option is turned on, which is the default state, key labels will be lowercase until you press a Shift key, which will switch the keyboard from UPPERCASE to lowercase labels.

I actually prefer that because it makes it easier to distinguish between the states of iOS’s confusing Shift key. But if UPPERCASE keys work better for you, use those instead. If you find the UPPERCASE keyboard distracting, you can always switch back to the lowercase design by turning Show Lowercase Keys off.

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