Accessibility · for older adults and the family who set up their phones
GrandKeys is a big-key keyboard for older adults, set up on their own phone by a son, a daughter or whoever helps them with it. It combines three sizes of oversized keys, high-contrast color pairs and a steadiness setting that ignores brushes and shaky double taps. A guided setup walks the helper through every choice and ends on a handover screen that greets the new user by name. On iPhone it never asks for Full Access, so iOS keeps the keyboard off the internet, and nothing typed is saved or sent.
Choose the gift setup and the app addresses you, the helper, one step per screen: an optional name, key size, colors and steadiness, each changing a live keyboard preview as you tap. Then come the steps for switching the keyboard on in Settings. The last screen changes to large type for your parent, greets them by name and asks for a first word.
Keys come in three oversized steps and a few high-contrast pairs, such as black on yellow or white on black, on the standard QWERTY layout with nothing moved. A pressed key pops up a larger copy of its letter, so it is clear which one was hit. Size, colors and steadiness sit in the app beside a live preview whenever they need a change.
On iPhone, GrandKeys does not ask for Full Access, and without it iOS keeps a keyboard off the network, so keystrokes only go to the app being typed in. The app saves its settings and the optional name, and nothing else. A privacy page inside the app says this in three plain lines.
The person who searches for a big keyboard is rarely the person who will type on it. More often it is a son or daughter who has watched a parent hit the wrong small key three times, give up on a reply and phone instead. GrandKeys is built around that split. The setup is written for the helper, and the keyboard is written for the person who keeps the phone.
Phones already offer ways to enlarge text and zoom the screen, and those are worth turning on. GrandKeys works on the keyboard itself: how big the keys are, how strongly they contrast with their letters, and what happens when a touch slides or repeats.
Open the app and a preview keyboard is already on screen, so you can type on it before anything is switched on. Pick the gift setup and the steps run in order, one task per screen, with a progress marker and a back button on each:
Each step is saved the moment it is made, so a phone call or a locked screen halfway through does not send you back to the start. For someone setting up their own phone there is a second path with the same choices in larger type.
The layout is the one people already know: QWERTY with shift, delete, return, a numbers and symbols key, and the globe key for switching keyboards. Keys are taller and their letters bigger, but nothing is rearranged, because an unfamiliar layout is harder to use than a small one. A pressed key pops up a larger copy of its letter, the way the standard keyboard does.
A settings key inside the keyboard changes the key size and steps through the color pairs without leaving the message being written, so a small adjustment never needs a trip back to the app.
Shaky hands make a few predictable kinds of mistake: a finger that lands on one key and slides onto the next, a brush too brief to be a real tap, and the same key hit twice in a fraction of a second. The steadiness setting looks only at where a touch starts and ends and how long it lasts. It settles a slide toward the key the touch was aimed at, ignores brushes, drops a too-quick repeat and holds steady when a finger wavers on the edge between two keys.
It never reads the words. There is no dictionary, no autocorrect, no word prediction and no learning from what is typed. When position and timing do not make the intended key clear, it keeps the key that was actually touched, because a keyboard that changes a correct letter does more harm than one that lets a wrong one through. Ordinary quick typing is meant to pass straight through, and no badge announces that a tap was adjusted.
A keyboard sees everything typed through it, which is why its permissions matter more than most apps'. On iPhone, a keyboard only gets internet access, or the right to write into space shared with its app, if it asks for Full Access and the user turns that on. GrandKeys does not ask. Apple's developer documentation states that without Full Access, keystrokes go only to the app that is using the keyboard.
The GrandKeys app makes no network requests either. It stores the settings and the optional name, has no account, and no usage data leaves the phone. Delete all data in the app's settings wipes the app's copy and the keyboard's copy together and returns the app to its first screen.
One limit comes from iOS itself. In password fields and phone number pads, iPhone swaps in its own keyboard for every third-party keyboard, and GrandKeys returns when the next ordinary text field is tapped. That is a security rule, so your parent will still see the standard keyboard on password screens.
GrandKeys does not let you control a parent's phone from your own. The gift setup happens on their phone, in your hands, and afterwards the settings are theirs to change. There is no account to link, no cloud copy and no reminders. It does not fix spelling, suggest words or offer decorative themes; the colors are there for contrast, not for looks.
GrandKeys is a typing tool. It does not diagnose, treat or improve tremor, eyesight or any other condition.
No. On iPhone, GrandKeys does not ask for Full Access, and its setup steps say so plainly. Apple's App Review Guidelines require every keyboard to keep working without it, and without it iOS does not let a keyboard reach the network.
No. Nothing typed is stored, sent or used to learn from. The app keeps only its settings and the name you entered for the greeting, it has no account, and it makes no network requests.
No. The setup is done on your parent's phone while you hold it, in about three minutes. There is no remote control and no link between your phone and theirs, and afterwards they can change any setting in the app or from the settings key on the keyboard.
iPhone replaces every third-party keyboard with its own in password fields and phone number pads. GrandKeys comes back as soon as an ordinary text field is tapped.
No. GrandKeys has no autocorrect, no word suggestions and no dictionary. The steadiness setting works only from where and for how long a finger touches the screen, never from the letters typed.
English QWERTY, German QWERTZ, accented letters for Spanish and Portuguese on a long press, and a Korean layout. The keyboard layout and the app's own language are set separately, so the menus can be in one language and the keys in another.
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