Does Reset All Settings remove your custom keyboard on iPhone?
Reset All Settings wipes the Settings app back to factory defaults without touching a single photo, message or installed app — but the keyboard you added and its Full Access grant live inside that same Settings layer, which is exactly why both vanish while the keyboard app itself sits untouched on the Home Screen.
Wi-Fi has been acting up, or Bluetooth will not pair with the car again, and Settings → General → Transfer or Reset iPhone → Reset → Reset All Settings looked like the sensible fix — the one Apple itself suggests for exactly this kind of tangled, hard-to-pin-down glitch. The phone restarts, and the first text field you tap shows the plain grey Apple keyboard instead of the one you had been using for months. It looks like the keyboard app got removed in the process. It did not.
What Reset All Settings actually resets
The name undersells how literal it is: this option puts every preference stored in the Settings app back to the state it was in on the day the phone was set up, without touching anything outside Settings. That includes:
- Wi-Fi networks and their saved passwords
- Bluetooth pairings, so every device has to be paired again
- The keyboard dictionary and the active keyboard list — Settings → General → Keyboard → Keyboards
- Full Access and other per-app permission grants — camera, microphone, location, tracking
- Cellular, VPN and APN settings
- Wallpaper, Home Screen layout on older iOS versions, and Control Center layout
It does not touch apps, photos, messages, notes, files, or anything stored in iCloud or in an app’s own local storage. Nothing is deleted in the sense of content disappearing — the phone simply forgets which preferences you had chosen and goes back to asking again, the same defaults a brand-new iPhone ships with.
Why the keyboard specifically disappears
A custom keyboard becomes usable in two separate places: the app itself, installed on the Home Screen with its own code and its own local storage, and an entry in Settings → General → Keyboard → Keyboards that tells iOS this keyboard is allowed to appear when you tap the globe key. Only the second one lives inside Settings. Reset All Settings clears that list back to just the two entries every iPhone starts with — the built-in keyboard for your language, and Emoji — which is why the globe key stops finding a third-party keyboard at all, while the app that provides it is still sitting on the Home Screen exactly where it was.
Full Access is reset for the same reason. It is a permission recorded against a specific app in that same Settings database, the same bucket camera and microphone access sit in for any other app, and Reset All Settings clears that whole bucket without exception.
What survives inside the app itself
Whatever a keyboard app keeps in its own local storage — a chosen theme, a chosen sound, a saved phrase, a purchase already made — lives outside the part of the phone this reset touches. That data is only at risk from deleting the app outright, not from resetting Settings. So a keyboard that reappears after a Reset All Settings, once it has been added back to the list, should still look and sound exactly the way it did before, with nothing to reconfigure beyond the two things Settings itself forgot.
Not the same thing as erasing the phone
It is worth keeping this apart from Erase All Content and Settings, one option further down the same menu, which wipes the entire device back to a factory state — apps, photos, messages, everything — and requires restoring from a backup afterward. Reset All Settings is the narrower, much less drastic sibling: a fresh Settings database on top of a phone whose content never moved.
Getting the keyboard back
- Settings → General → Keyboard → Keyboards → Add New Keyboard…, and tap the keyboard again. Its app is already there; it only needs to be pointed to.
- Tap the keyboard’s own row in that same list and turn Allow Full Access back on, if a feature you rely on needs it — a clipboard button is the usual case.
- Open the app itself once, in case it uses its own screen to confirm the keyboard is set up correctly, the same walkthrough a first install shows.
Where Kibo fits
Kibo keeps its themes, key sounds, backlight effects and any saved phrases inside its own app storage, so a Reset All Settings leaves all of it untouched — the only step afterward is adding Kibo back through Add New Keyboard, the same short list as the very first setup. Full Access needs no attention either way: it is off by default, resets to off along with every other keyboard’s, and Kibo only reads it for the Copy word, Copy line and Paste buttons on its own toolbar. Typing, autocorrect, every theme, every sound, every light effect, emoji, kaomoji, fancy text and all 30 languages work the moment the keyboard is added back. It is free to download.
Frequently asked questions
Did Reset All Settings delete my keyboard app?
No. Apps, and everything they store in their own local data, are outside what Reset All Settings touches. Only the Settings-side entry that lets the app’s keyboard appear on the globe key gets cleared, which is why it looks missing while the app itself is untouched on the Home Screen.
Will I lose my keyboard themes, sounds or purchases after Reset All Settings?
No, as long as they are stored inside the app’s own local storage, which is the normal place for a keyboard to keep them. Reset All Settings clears preferences that live in the Settings app itself — the keyboard list and permission grants — not an app’s own data.
What is the difference between Reset All Settings and Erase All Content and Settings?
Reset All Settings only touches preferences stored in the Settings app — Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, the keyboard list, permission grants — and leaves every app and every piece of content in place. Erase All Content and Settings wipes the entire phone back to factory condition and needs a backup to restore from afterward.
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.