I’ve written a blog post about the most important technological issue of our time - why every streaming service has its own weird keyboard.
I don’t really mind the alphabetical order. As others have already mentioned not everyone knows QWERTY, but most people know the alphabet.
The worst layout I’ve seen is where all the letters are in a single row. I think AppleTV is like this and I feel like I’ve seen it with at least one or two other services. But at least with AppleTV I can usually use my phone as a keyboard if I’m typing more than a couple characters.
It would be nice if there was a consistent layout that all the apps would use.
What about Youtube and HBO Max?
Have to respectfully disagree on this. For typing purposes, QWERY is indeed better, but if you’re using a remote’s up-down-left-right buttons, I feel a-z feels more familiar.
I disagree. Gaming consoles typically have qwerty layout for on-screen typing with a D-pad. I still think it’s faster to input when I know where the letters are. With different services adopting different alphabetical layouts, I don’t quickly know where the letters are. Really, the best solution would be to make it an option. I always end up casting from my phone which allows me to use my phone’s keyboard.
test
QWERTY should’ve been retired with the typewriter. It makes zero logical sense to use on touch screen let alone remote. Familiarity isn’t a good enough reason.
As much as I agree with the argument for QWERTY agaist Dvorak or Colemark as a default, alphabetical ordering seems more generally standard than even QWERTY. And in any case, when typing something on the TV the remote seems to be the real bottleneck.
As a full time colemak user, QWERTY really does my head in these days. I regress to a one-finger typist every time!
As a Dvorak user, Dvorak is pretty terrible for single-finger typing since the focus is on hand-alternation. If I had the choice I’d probably choose this.
There have been layouts developed for single or limited-finger use and I think it’s a shame they never caught on.
As a colemak user, I would prefer abc instead of qwerty
As a Dvorak user, I agree.
I really like how Kodi let’s you send text to the media centre from your phone keyboard using an app.
Quite incredible that so many modern streaming interfaces are still using the horrid arrow keys to punch in letters like its a 1990s game console.
Could be worse. Could be a Nokia T9 predictive text input!
Idk, those worked great when I was young. \o/
This has never bothered me before but it has now, thanks
Yeah those keyboard layouts are TERRIBLE! Takes forever to type anything and I usually make mistakes too. Now I use AppleTVs and as soon as I open a search field my iPhone pops up a keyboard to type instead of using the remote, or I can use the Siri Remote to dictate the phrase. Still would prefer a QWERTY layout though.
The text input pop-up on iPhones when using an Apple TV really is one of the best features I’ve encountered in streaming-land.
Voice wins by a mile here
i hate talking to the tv or any device
