Google Docs Typing Lag Issue
Hello Apple Community,
I posted this question on the Google Docs Editors Community site and the person helping me told me to contact Apple for help. Because this is a third party app issue, I wanted to give this a try first.
I have a 9th gen 64GB Space Gray Wi-Fi model iPad. I use this every day for many things. I rely on it for much of everyday life. Ever since iOS 15 came out, I noticed this weird lag happening on my iPad. I only happens on my iPad and I don’t know what to do. I noticed the issue with my last iPad I don’t have anymore, which was a 7th gen 32GB Gold Wi-Fi iPad. When that iPad died, I was forced to use my 5th gen 32GB iSilver Wi-Fi iPad, which is now five years old. I hope you can bear with me, I know it can get confusing. The lag is much much worse on the 5th gen iPad and I’ll get to explaining that in more detail in a sec. While in contact with the Google Community someone asked me to try typing on a computer, so I did and there’s no lag. I was able to test on my sister’s M1 MacBook Air and I had no issues.
Now, Google Docs is an essential app to me, I use it for a it of things. It’s hard to explain, but I hope you can understand. When I open a document and start typing, everything is fine, for about 5 minutes, then the lag starts. I’ll tap a letter on the keyboard on the screen and there is a delay before it puts the letter into my doc. As I continue to type, it gets worse, to the point at which I’m WORDS ahead of it. It even doesn’t register some letters. And other times, it thinks I type a letter twice. Same with the back key/delete key. I don’t use a third party keyboard on my iPads, I’ve find that they don’t help much and only cause lagging issues for me. So Grammerly, as I’ve heard causes this issue, isn’t my culprit. So, I thought, maybe my 20,000+ word Google Doc is a bit too big for my iPad to handle, which I can’t figure out why that’d be, so I’ve split one of the docs for testing and still it’s not fixing the issue. Before iOS 15 came out I had this big of Docs and on my 7th gen iPad and it ran perfectly fine. So after that failed, I decided to try something else, and on top of the split doc too. I thought maybe a Bluetooth keyboard would help, maybe my iPad can’t handle all my taps. Same exact results. Starts out fine, then the lag begins and then it gets worse. I tried this with a non split doc, a split doc, and a split doc of a split doc, cutting the word count down to hundreds instead of thousands. So then after much trouble, I finally got someone to answer on my post on Google Docs Editors Community and they had me test using a computer. It works. I can’t barrow my sister’s Mac all the time and even if I could, she’s going to college this next Fall, so her Mac will be gone.
I can’t buy a MacBook myself because they are so expensive. And I won’t by a Windows computer or a ChromeBook. I’m visually impaired and the times I’ve needed to use Windows has not be good times. My family computer is a Windows and I’ve used it some for in a pinch, which has worked, but it’s so highly wanted in our family, I can’t use it all the time either. I’m so extremely cornered. And when I’m a grown up, I’m not sure how I’ll be able to afford an iPhone, iPad, Mac, and two pairs of glasses on top of that. I am a strong iOS user because it’s so Accessible and my experiences with Android have all be mostly bad and nightmares.
And a quick sidenote that might help, I’ve noticed over the last few months of me living with this that once the lag begins, I can save and exit the doc, then open it again the the lag will go away, but for a much shorter time than when I completely close the Google Docs App and restart it.
So, I am desperate at this point, I NEED THIS LAG TO BE FIXED! So if you can help, please do!
Sincerely grateful,
Captain
PS: I’m sorry for the extremely long post.
My iPad info:
Device: 9th Generation iPad
Software: iOS 15.4.1
Model: Wi-Fi (Not Wi-Fi + Cellular)
Capacity: 64GB
Color: Space Gray
