The new iPadOS includes enhanced supportr for physical keyboards.
In addition to iOS 13.4 , Apple will also release iPadOS 13.4 in mid-March and the new OS contains all the novelties from iOS, but with a handy extra. There will be an enhanced support for physical keyboards.
What is new in iPadOS 13.4?
The Photos app will receive support for additional shortcuts, which should make it easier to browse through photos. There are also new options for customizing the key functions and developers can do more with a physical keyboard.
The first improvement is the addition of various shortcuts to the Photos app. This app used to work very poorly with an external keyboard and even though Apple does not go as far as they did in the macOS version, but still improvements are welcome.
Hot keys will be placed in two different places: In the overviews with photos and when a photo is shown in large format.
In the photo overview you can switch between different views with the following keys:
^1: View photos
^2: For you
^3: View albums
^4: Search display
The Photos tab also contains additional shortcuts to change the mode and switch between sorting by year (⌘1), by month (⌘2), by day (⌘3) or to view all photos (⌘4) . Zooming in and out with ⌘ + and ⌘- key combinations is also possible.
When a photo or video is on the screen, the app also adjusts the available shortcuts. Here are the following seven shortcuts available in the first beta of iPadOS 13.4:
⌫: delete the photo
⌘S: displays the sharing menu
⌘E: change the photo (but after that there is no shortcut anymore, not even to leave the editor)
⌘L: hide the photo without deleting it
⌘D: duplicate photo
.: add to or remove from favorites;
⌥E: display of exploration (additional information about the photo, in particular the geolocation).
The shortcut for sharing an image is a great addon that we also hope to see in more apps. The key combination choice for the shortcut is a bit strange though, as it works as ‘Save’ for Macs.
How to customize hot keys on iPadOS 13.4?
A new feature that is brought from Mac to iPad is the ability to customize hot keys. These are the keys such as Command, Alt / Option, Cmd etc. You can assign other functions to these keys via the menu Settings > General > Keyboard > Hardware Keyboard > Special Keys.
Another interesting feature is going to be for developers. With iPadOS 13.4, apps can detect when the user presses or releases the keys. Previously, apps could only detect when a key was pressed, but not when it was released.
