Does turning on Full Access for one keyboard turn it on for the others too?
Full Access is a per-keyboard switch, not a phone-wide one. What granting it for one keyboard actually changes, why the others are untouched, and how to check each one’s setting on its own.
You have two or three keyboards added on your iPhone, you switch on Full Access for one of them to unlock a paste button or a sync feature, and a reasonable question follows: does that same switch now cover the other keyboards too, or the rest of the phone? It does not, and the reason is not a policy Apple bolted on afterwards — it is built into how a keyboard extension runs in the first place.
The permission belongs to one keyboard, not to your phone
Settings → General → Keyboard → Keyboards lists every keyboard you have added as its own row. Tap a row’s name and you land on a small settings page for that one keyboard, with a single switch on it: Allow Full Access. That page and that switch exist separately for every keyboard in the list. Turning it on for one does nothing to any other row — each keeps whatever it was already set to, and stays there until you open that specific keyboard’s page and change it yourself.
This holds even if the two keyboards are made by the same developer, or if you switch between them constantly with the globe key. iOS is not tracking “this person trusts keyboards” as a general idea. It is tracking one setting per extension.
Why it works this way
Full Access is what lifts a keyboard extension out of its default sandbox — before it is granted, a keyboard cannot reach the network or the system clipboard, no matter how much you trust the company that made it. If that grant applied to every keyboard on the phone at once, adding one keyboard that genuinely needs network access for a legitimate feature would quietly hand the same reach to a second keyboard you added purely to type in another language or to pick a theme, without you ever agreeing to that for the second one. Keeping the switch per-keyboard means the decision you make is about exactly the extension you are looking at, and nothing else on the list is affected by it.
Checking more than one keyboard
Because nothing carries over, there is no single screen that shows every keyboard’s Full Access state at a glance — you check them the same way you set them.
- Open Settings → General → Keyboard → Keyboards.
- Tap the name of the keyboard you want to check — the text itself, not the drag handle on the right.
- Read the Allow Full Access switch on that keyboard’s own page.
- Go back and repeat for each other keyboard in the list, since none of them reflect what you just saw.
A keyboard reinstalled after being deleted resets its own Full Access to off, which is a separate iOS behaviour with nothing to do with what any other keyboard on the phone is set to — one keyboard’s history does not leak into another’s.
Where Kibo fits
Kibo does not need Full Access for typing, autocorrect, any of its themes, key sounds or backlight effects, the emoji and kaomoji panels, the fancy text styles, or any of its 30 typing languages — all of that works with the switch off. Turning it on unlocks exactly one thing: the Copy word, Copy line and Paste buttons on Kibo’s own keyboard toolbar, which need the system clipboard. That switch belongs to Kibo alone, the same as any other keyboard’s does — setting it has no effect on any other keyboard you have added, and no other keyboard’s setting reaches into Kibo either.
Frequently asked questions
If I grant Full Access to one keyboard, can it see what I type in a different one?
No. Only one keyboard extension is loaded at a time — whichever one is currently on screen. A keyboard that is not active is not running, let alone reading anything. Full Access changes what the active extension is allowed to do with the clipboard and the network; it has no bearing on a keyboard that isn’t the one you’re typing with.
Do I have to grant Full Access again every time I switch keyboards with the globe key?
No. The switch is stored per keyboard and does not get re-asked when you cycle through your keyboards. Once you set it for a given keyboard, it stays that way — on or off — no matter how many times you tap or hold the globe key afterwards.
I have three keyboards installed. Do I really need to check all three separately?
Yes, if you want to know each one’s actual state. Go to Settings → General → Keyboard → Keyboards and tap each keyboard’s name in turn — there is no combined view, because the setting was never combined in the first place.
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.