Sporadic Issues with Magic Keyboard in Mail app (iPadOS)

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Sporadic Issues with Magic Keyboard in Mail app (iPadOS)

The up/down arrows and Delete key on the Magic Kayboards doesn‘t work for me in the Mail app. The keys function perfectly in all other apps and all other Mail app features appear to work just fine. Stranger still, they will come to life every now and then and work for a few mails. Then the bug returns.

This issue severely degrades the email experience on the iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard as touchscreen intervention is forced.

The following thread, titled „Mail Navigation on IPadOS w/ Magic Keyboard is Glitchy“, describes the same symptoms, yet yielded no result aside from a workaround:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251320063

iPad Pro, iPadOS 14

Posted on Oct 6, 2020 12:58 PM

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Answer 1

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chharris Author

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Oct 19, 2020 3:09 PM in response to balgev

After discussing with Apple support, it seems this is indeed a designed feature of iPadOS14. Disappointing to say the least. The best workaround I’ve found consists of the following:

Enabling Full Keyboard Access (accessibility settings) BUT ONLY when working through my inbox. The fastest way I’ve found to toggle this on and off without accessing the settings menu is to enable it as a Control Centre button. I enable it when working on mail and then disable it for everything else
Making this Full Keyboard Access setting as least intrusive as possible by reducing the auto-hide to the minimum 1s, and changing the colour to white. The default setting of a big blue border is extremely distracting

None of the above is perfect, but I’ve found it to be just acceptable for now. I’m hoping this get designed back out of future iPadOS versions.

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Answer 2

chharris Author

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Nov 16, 2020 12:54 PM in response to chharris

Interesting development...in 14.2 (18B91), the Full Keyboard Access hack no longer works. But instead, the up/down arrows work without FKA set. Although Del still doe not. Maybe we’ll get it 1 button at a time :)

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Answer 3

chharris Author

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Nov 20, 2020 11:54 AM in response to chharris

Just call me Nostradamus. With 14.3 (18C5054c at least) it’s back! I have full functional use of the Del key and full normal service has been resumed 🙂.

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