How to reorder keyboards on your iPhone
The exact drag-to-reorder step in Settings, what keyboard order actually controls — a single globe tap, not what shows up after a restart — and why removing keyboards you never use fixes more than reordering does.
The keyboards you have added on iPhone sit in a specific order, and that order is not just bookkeeping — it decides where a single tap on the globe key lands. Once you have more than two or three keyboards installed, that becomes the difference between the globe key doing exactly what you expect and quietly drifting somewhere else every time you tap it.
The steps
- Open Settings → General → Keyboard → Keyboards.
- Tap Edit in the top right.
- Each row grows a three-line handle on its right edge. Press and drag that handle, not the row itself, to move a keyboard up or down.
- Tap Done once the order looks right.
That is the whole mechanic. There is no separate “make default” button anywhere in iOS — position in this one list is the only ordering control third-party keyboards get.
What order actually controls
A single tap on the globe key 🌐 advances to the next keyboard in this list, wrapping back to the top once it reaches the bottom. With two keyboards installed that is a coin flip either way; with five, a keyboard sitting third or fourth can mean two or three taps to reach whichever one you actually wanted. Dragging your everyday keyboard to the very top means the first tap after opening any text field goes straight to it, rather than to whichever one happened to be used last.
Press and hold the globe key instead of tapping it, and iOS shows a picker listing every keyboard you have added, generally in that same order. Holding sidesteps the tap-to-cycle sequence entirely — useful with a long list, since it gets you to any keyboard in one gesture regardless of where it sits.
What order does not control
Reordering the list does not create a default keyboard that survives a restart. As covered in the guide on a keyboard switching back on its own, iOS falls back to its own system keyboard immediately after the phone restarts or an app is force-quit, no matter which keyboard sat at the top of your list beforehand — that is a separate iOS behaviour, and there is no setting, order included, that changes it.
It also does not shorten the cycle itself. Moving a keyboard you use often to the top gets a single tap there faster, but every keyboard still installed is still a stop on the loop if you tap past your favourite by mistake or land on the wrong one from a different starting point. If the real complaint is “the globe key cycles through too many keyboards,” removing the ones you never open is what actually fixes that — reordering only changes which one a tap from the very top lands on first.
A quick way to decide what to do
- You use one keyboard almost always, plus one or two others rarely → drag the main one to the top and stop there.
- You genuinely switch between several languages or keyboards all the time → hold the globe instead of relying on order at all.
- The list has keyboards you tried once and forgot about → remove them; that shortens the cycle in a way no amount of reordering can.
- A keyboard opens the system one instead of yours right after a restart → that is expected iOS behaviour, not something to fix with order.
Where Kibo fits
Kibo carries its 30 typing languages inside a single keyboard rather than registering one entry per language, so a tap on the globe key while Kibo is active cycles through whichever of those languages you have turned on, with a brief on-screen label naming the one you land on — holding the key still opens the full system picker, so switching to a different app or to Apple’s own keyboard is never blocked. Where the Settings → Keyboards order matters for Kibo is the same place it matters for any keyboard: dragging it to the top decides whether the very first tap in a text field reaches it, or reaches whatever else is installed alongside it.
Frequently asked questions
How do I change the order of my keyboards on iPhone?
Settings → General → Keyboard → Keyboards → Edit, then drag each row by the three-line handle on its right edge into the order you want, then tap Done.
Does reordering keyboards set a default that survives a restart?
No. iOS opens its own system keyboard first after every restart or force-quit, regardless of list order. There is no setting that makes a third-party keyboard the default across a restart.
Will reordering shorten how many taps it takes to reach a keyboard buried in the list?
Only for the one you move to the top. Every other keyboard still installed is still a stop in the cycle — removing keyboards you do not use shortens the loop; reordering only changes which one the first tap reaches.
Is there a faster way to reach a specific keyboard than reordering the list?
Press and hold the globe key instead of tapping it. iOS shows every installed keyboard as a list you can tap directly, which reaches any of them in one gesture regardless of where it sits in Settings.
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.