How to remove a keyboard from your iPhone
Two different things people mean by “remove” — taking it out of the switching list versus deleting it for good — the exact Settings path for each, and what actually happens to a keyboard’s settings when it goes.
“Remove a keyboard” turns out to describe two different actions, and which one you actually want depends on why you are doing it. One takes a keyboard out of rotation while leaving the app on your phone, ready to come back with a couple of taps. The other deletes it completely, app and all. Both use the same Settings screen, and it is worth knowing which one you are doing before you tap anything.
The two things “remove” can mean
If you just want a keyboard to stop showing up when you tap the globe key, but you might switch back to it later, you want it out of the list, not off your phone. If you have decided you are done with a keyboard app entirely — you switched to something else, or you never use it — you want it gone completely: extension, settings and app icon together.
iOS treats these as separate steps by default, which is why so many people end up doing one and assuming the other happened too.
Take it out of the list, keep the app
- Open Settings → General → Keyboard → Keyboards.
- Tap Edit in the top right.
- Tap the red minus circle next to the keyboard you want gone, then tap the Delete button that appears next to it.
- Tap Done.
That keyboard no longer appears when you tap or hold the globe key, and it is no longer part of the cycling order. The app itself is untouched — still on your Home Screen, still opens normally, still holds onto whatever it stored. Adding the keyboard back later is the same “Add New Keyboard…” step you used the first time; nothing about removing it from the list changes that.
Delete the app entirely
This is an ordinary Home Screen action and has nothing keyboard-specific about it: press and hold the app icon, tap Remove App, then Delete App (or find it in the App Library and do the same from there). This removes the container app and its keyboard extension together, in one step.
You do not need to visit Settings → General → Keyboard → Keyboards first. iOS drops the entry from that list on its own once the app is gone — the next time you open the Keyboards screen, it simply is not there. A keyboard extension cannot exist without the app that installed it, so there is nothing left over to clean up.
Does the order matter?
No. Some people remove the keyboard from the list first, out of habit or because it feels like the tidier way to do it, then delete the app afterwards. Others just delete the app straight away. Both land in the same place — no entry in the keyboard list, no extension running, no app icon — because deleting the app was always the step that actually matters. Taking it out of the list first is optional, not a prerequisite.
What happens to the keyboard’s settings
A keyboard extension runs inside the sandbox of the app that installed it, and whatever that app lets you customise — a theme, a saved snippet, a background photo — is typically stored inside that same sandbox. Delete the app and that storage goes with it. There is nothing left on the phone to “un-delete” afterwards, because the app is what held it.
Whether any of it also exists somewhere else — an account, iCloud, a server — depends entirely on that specific app. A keyboard with no account and no server has nowhere else for your settings to be, so deleting it is the whole story: the settings are gone because there was only ever one copy.
One thing removing a third-party keyboard does not touch: the autocorrect word list iOS itself has learned from your typing. That dictionary is a system-level feature, not something any individual keyboard extension owns, so it survives independently of which keyboards you add or remove. Clearing it is a separate action, buried in Settings → General → Transfer or Reset iPhone → Reset Keyboard Dictionary, and it is not something removing a keyboard app does for you.
Why you might remove just one keyboard out of several
If the globe key has started cycling through more keyboards than you actually use, removing the ones that just sit there is the fix that actually works — reordering the list only changes which one a single tap lands on, it does not shorten the cycle. Take out anything you added to try once and never opened again.
It is also useful when you are trying a different keyboard app for a while but are not ready to commit. Taking your old one out of the list stops it competing for the globe-key cycle without deleting the app, so switching back later is a two-tap job in Settings rather than a full reinstall.
Where Kibo fits
Kibo has no account and no server, so removing it is exactly the two steps above and nothing more: take it out of Settings → General → Keyboard → Keyboards if you want it gone from the list, delete the app if you want it gone completely. Either way, nothing you had typed was ever collected, so there is nothing left behind to worry about — a theme or sound you had picked simply goes when the app does, the same as any setting stored only on your own phone.
Frequently asked questions
Does removing a keyboard delete my autocorrect dictionary?
No. iOS keeps its learned-word dictionary as a system-level feature separate from any individual keyboard extension, so it is unaffected by adding or removing third-party keyboards. Clearing it is a separate step under Settings → General → Transfer or Reset iPhone.
Do I need to turn off Full Access before removing a keyboard?
No. You can remove a keyboard with Full Access on or off — there is no need to change that switch first.
If I delete the app before removing it from the keyboard list, will a stray entry stay in Settings?
No. iOS removes the entry from the keyboard list automatically once the app is deleted. You do not need to also do the Edit-and-delete step in Settings first.
Can I remove a keyboard without deleting the app?
Yes. Settings → General → Keyboard → Keyboards → Edit → the red minus circle → Delete takes it out of the switching list while the app itself, and anything it stored, stays on your phone.
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.