Does the Button Shapes accessibility setting change your iPhone keyboard?
Button Shapes adds an underline or an outline to controls that otherwise rely on color alone to read as tappable — a Cancel label, an icon in a toolbar. A keyboard’s key grid was never built from those controls, on Apple’s keyboard or a third-party one, so the setting has nothing there to draw. It does reach a different layer: the toolbar some apps add just above the keyboard for their own buttons.
You turned on Button Shapes because telling a tappable label from plain text by color alone is genuinely hard, and now you are wondering whether it does anything to the keyboard — specifically the keys themselves, the part you look at and press the most. It is a reasonable thing to check, and the answer here is a little different from most of the other accessibility settings on the same screen: this one was never going to touch the key grid, on any keyboard, Apple’s included.
What Button Shapes actually does
The switch lives at Settings → Accessibility → Display & Text Size → Button Shapes. Turning it on adds a visual shape to controls that would otherwise rely on tint color alone to look tappable: a thin underline appears beneath text-only buttons like “Cancel” or “Edit” in a navigation bar, and a faint background shape appears behind icon-only buttons that used to be just a plain glyph. It exists for people who find it hard to tell a tappable control apart from ordinary text or decoration when color is the only cue, and it was introduced alongside a companion setting, On/Off Labels, that does the same kind of job for switches.
A narrower target than Bold Text or Larger Text
Bold Text, covered in a separate guide, reaches any letter drawn with the system font. Larger Text reaches any text an app opted into scaling through Dynamic Type. Button Shapes is pickier than either: it does not look at text in general, only at things built as an actual interactive control — a system button, a bar item, a switch — through Apple’s own UIKit or SwiftUI APIs. A paragraph that merely looks clickable gains nothing from it. Only a genuine button, one iOS itself recognises as a button, ever gets the shape.
Why a keyboard’s keys were never candidates
A keyboard is not a row of individual system buttons standing next to each other the way a Cancel link sits next to a Done link in a navigation bar. It is one continuous surface that the keyboard’s own layout code draws in a single pass: it works out where each key sits for the current language and screen width, fills the shape, and prints the label, all inside the keyboard’s own rendering rather than through a collection of separate UIButton controls iOS could individually recognise and outline. There is no per-key object for Button Shapes to find and act on.
That is true of Apple’s own keyboard just as much as any third-party one, which is what makes this case different from Bold Text or Increase Contrast. Those two do reach Apple’s key labels, because the letters on Apple’s keys are drawn through the same system text-rendering its other apps use. Button Shapes has no equivalent path in either direction — the keys were never the kind of object it looks for, so there is nothing for a third-party keyboard to opt into even if it wanted to match Apple’s behaviour here.
The toolbar sitting just above the keyboard is a different layer
Some apps add a row of their own buttons directly above the keyboard while you type — formatting icons in a notes app, an attach-photo icon in a messaging app, Markup tools while annotating an image. Those rows belong to the app hosting the text field, built from the same system button controls a navigation bar uses, not to the keyboard extension underneath them. Button Shapes reaches that row the same way it reaches a Cancel button anywhere else in the app, because it genuinely is one of the controls the setting looks for — it is only sitting close to the keyboard, not part of it.
How to tell which layer actually changed
If an outline or underline shows up on an icon in a thin strip right at the top edge of the keyboard, that strip belongs to whatever app you are typing in, not to the keyboard, and Button Shapes is doing exactly what it is meant to. If the letter keys underneath look exactly as they did before, on Apple’s keyboard or a third-party one, that is the expected result rather than a sign that anything failed to pick up the setting — the key grid was never a set of buttons in the sense this particular switch cares about.
Where Kibo fits
Kibo draws its key grid and its own toolbar — the Copy word, Copy line and Paste buttons — as part of the same custom-rendered surface as the rest of the keyboard, the way its 56 themes draw a backdrop, a key fill, a pressed state and a corner radius. None of that is assembled from system button controls, so Button Shapes has nothing to add a shape to there, on or off, the same way it has nothing to add on Apple’s own key grid either. None of this touches Full Access, which Kibo reads only for those same Copy and Paste buttons. It is free to download.
Frequently asked questions
Does turning on Button Shapes change how my custom keyboard’s keys look?
No, and the same is true of Apple’s own keyboard. A keyboard’s key grid is one continuously drawn surface rather than a set of individual system button controls, and Button Shapes only adds an outline to things iOS recognises as an actual button.
Where do I find Button Shapes?
Settings → Accessibility → Display & Text Size → Button Shapes, the same screen as Reduce Transparency, Bold Text, Larger Text and Increase Contrast.
Is Button Shapes the same as Increase Contrast?
No. Increase Contrast pushes text and controls further apart from their background with color and weight. Button Shapes adds an actual underline or outline shape, and only to things built as a genuine system button, switch or bar item — a narrower and more specific target than Increase Contrast’s.
Why do some icons above my keyboard get an outline but the keys themselves never do?
Those icons belong to a toolbar the app you are typing in adds above the keyboard, built from real system button controls, so Button Shapes reaches them directly. The keyboard’s own key grid, on any keyboard, is drawn as one surface rather than a set of separate buttons, so there is nothing there for the setting to outline.
Try it on your own keyboard
Kibo is a free custom keyboard for iPhone with real mechanical key sounds, a wardrobe of themes and RGB backlight effects. No account, no ads, and it works with Full Access left off.