While Apple Intelligence turned out to be less intelligent than we all hoped, my Magic Keyboard turned out to be more magical than I expected, once I changed a single annoying setting.

If you don’t care about the narrative and just want to know how I made my Magic Keyboard better, I respect that.

Go to: Settings > Accessibility > Keyboard, and turn off Full Keyboard Access. You’re welcome.

Right, back to the narrative…

Since getting a used Magic Keyboard for my iPad, I’ve been kind of middling on it. The keyboard itself is far heavier than I hoped—it makes my 13” iPad Air (M2) as heavy as my 13” MacBook Air (also M2). But, for me at least, in theory, when I’m traveling, the iPad does slightly more than the MacBook. I know, a mad thing to say at first glance—but I really like to draw and write. Once I’ve attached the keyboard, the iPad can do both. The MacBook just does the writing part—really well, but that’s it.

There was, however, a problem.

The first and most obvious issue: when I press ⌘+Space to bring up Spotlight, the first press of the spacebar doesn’t add a space—it activates selection.

And when I open Pages, the first tap of the spacebar puts a highlight around the active window. In Pages, this causes the whole page to go slightly yellow, with a stronger yellow border. After that first tap, things behave normally, but it’s… weird.

I assumed maybe my used Magic Keyboard had some minor fault. But then I noticed the same issue with a separate Bluetooth keyboard I use at my desk for art. The spacebar was triggering layer-naming or selecting windows entirely in Clip Studio Paint (CSP.)

At that point, I figured iPads were just a bit janky with keyboards. But how could that be? Loads of people on Nebula and YouTube use iPads as their main computing devices, and none of them mentioned this oddity.

So I went off in search of a fix.

Turns out it’s an accessibility feature, seemingly turned on by default (I certainly don’t remember enabling it). Under Accessibility > Keyboard, there’s a setting called ‘Full Keyboard Access.’ I haven’t researched what its exact use case is, but turning it off instantly fixed everything.

Now I can use space, arrow keys, and shift buttons like a normal person. No weirdness. And I’m honestly shocked I didn’t investigate this sooner.

If you’re having trouble with hardware keyboards on iPad, I hope this helps you too.

☺️