How to Get Quick Access to Symbols in Google’s Gboard Keyboard for Android

If you’re like me, you can’t stand having to switch keyboard modes just to hit an exclamation mark or comma in the middle of a body of text. The thing is, this is Gboard’s default setting. Fortunately, there’s a really simple way to fix it.

RELATED: How to Add a Shortcut to Google Keyboard's Settings in Android's App Drawer

You’ll need to jump into Gboard’s settings menu—there are a couple of ways to do this.

Open the keyboard in a text field, then long-press the button to the right of the symbols key and slide over to the gear icon. Then choose “Gboard Keyboard Settings.”

Alternatively, open the app drawer and find the Gboard entry (if you can’t find it, it’s because it hasn’t been enabled).

Either way is two means to the same end, so it doesn’t really matter which way you go about it.

In Gboard’s menu, select Preferences.

Scroll all the way to the bottom and enable “Long press for symbols.”

Bam, that’s all there is to it. Your keyboard will go from this:

To this:

So you can simply long-press a button to use its symbol, which honestly just makes life a lot easier.