How to type in two languages on iPhone without switching apps
Adding a second keyboard language, what the globe key does with a tap versus a hold, and how Chinese, Japanese and Korean input differs.
You do not need an app, a paste buffer, or a translation tool to write in two languages on an iPhone. Everything you need is a second keyboard in your keyboard list and one key at the bottom of the screen.
Add the second language
- Settings → General → Keyboard → Keyboards.
- Tap “Add New Keyboard…”.
- Pick the language you want from the list. Some languages then offer a layout choice — French gives you AZERTY or QWERTY, Russian gives you ЙЦУКЕН — and you can change it later by tapping the keyboard in the list.
The new keyboard appears in your list straight away. Repeat for as many languages as you want; there is no practical limit, but the more you add, the longer the globe-key cycle gets.
Switching mid-sentence
The globe key 🌐 sits at the bottom-left of the keyboard. One tap moves to the next keyboard in your list, in the order shown in Settings. Press and hold instead and iOS shows a picker listing every keyboard, so you can go straight to the one you want.
With two languages, tapping is faster. With five, holding is. If you find yourself tapping the globe three times to reach the same keyboard every day, go to Settings → General → Keyboard → Keyboards → Edit and drag it up the list.
What happens to autocorrect
Each keyboard carries its own dictionary, and iOS switches the whole autocorrect and prediction stack when you switch keyboards. This is the part that makes bilingual typing feel effortless once it is set up — the English keyboard stops trying to “fix” your Spanish, because it is no longer the keyboard being used.
It also means the switch has to actually happen. If you type Spanish on the English keyboard, autocorrect will fight you the whole way, and no setting fixes that except pressing the globe key.
One keyboard, several languages
Some third-party keyboards handle languages internally instead of registering one iOS keyboard per language. In that arrangement you add a single keyboard to iOS and switch languages inside it, which keeps the iOS keyboard list short and keeps your theme, sounds and layout consistent across every language you type.
Chinese, Japanese and Korean
These three do not simply map keys to letters — they compose. Typing them well means understanding what the composition step is doing.
Chinese — pinyin
You type the romanised sound of a word and the keyboard offers characters that match. Because many characters share a pronunciation, a candidate list is unavoidable; you pick from it. Good implementations learn which candidates you actually choose and float them to the front over time.
Japanese — romaji to kana
Typing “ka” produces か, “sha” produces しゃ, and doubled consonants produce the small tsu. The conversion happens as you type; there is no separate confirmation step for kana itself.
Korean — jamo assembly
Hangul is written as syllable blocks, and the keyboard assembles them from individual jamo as you type: ㅎ + ㅏ + ㄴ becomes 한. The block reshapes live while you type it, which looks strange the first time and becomes invisible very quickly.
How Kibo handles this
Kibo registers as one keyboard and carries 30 typing languages inside it: English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Turkish, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Czech, Hungarian, Romanian, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Russian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, Hindi, Thai, Korean, Japanese and Simplified Chinese.
Enable the ones you use, and a tap on the globe key cycles through just those — with a brief on-screen label showing the language you have landed on in its own name. Press and hold the same key and you still get the system keyboard picker, so switching to an Apple keyboard is never blocked. Korean assembles jamo into syllables, Japanese converts romaji to kana, and Chinese takes pinyin and offers character candidates.
Frequently asked questions
How many keyboard languages can I add on iPhone?
There is no meaningful limit. The practical constraint is the globe key: every added keyboard makes the tap-to-cycle sequence longer, so beyond three or four it is quicker to press and hold and pick from the list.
Does autocorrect switch language automatically?
It follows the keyboard, not the text. Switch keyboards and the dictionary switches with it; type a second language on the first keyboard and autocorrect will keep correcting it toward the wrong language.
Can I keep my theme when I change language?
With one iOS keyboard per language, no — each is its own keyboard. With a keyboard that handles languages internally, such as Kibo, the theme, sounds and lighting stay the same across every language.
Try it on your own keyboard
Kibo is a free custom keyboard for iPhone with 17 mechanical key sounds, 56 themes and 15 backlight effects. No account, no ads, and it works with Full Access left off.