Why does my iPhone keyboard reset when I switch apps?
The extension is torn down every time the keyboard hides, so anything held only in memory goes with it — and the same mechanism is why keyboards cost nothing when you are not typing.
The keyboard extension is shut down every time the keyboard goes away, so anything it was holding in memory goes with it.
Dismissing the keyboard ends the process
iOS starts a keyboard extension when a text field asks for one, and tears it down when the keyboard is dismissed — switching apps, closing the field, sending the message, swiping the keyboard down. It is not suspended in the background the way an app in the app switcher is. It stops existing until the next time you tap a field.
The next appearance is therefore a fresh instance with no inheritance from the last one. Whatever the previous instance was holding in memory alone was never written anywhere, and there is nothing for the new instance to read back. In practice that is the state people notice going missing:
- a shift or caps lock that was engaged;
- the emoji or kaomoji tab you had open, and how far you had scrolled in it;
- a fancy-text style you had toggled on for one message;
- whether a settings panel or a symbol page was open when you left;
- anything typed but not committed inside the keyboard’s own interface.
Why settings survive and interface state does not
The difference is storage, not luck. Settings — the theme, the key sound, the lighting effect, the enabled languages, the sound and haptic switches — are written to storage shared between the keyboard and its container app the moment you change them, so a fresh instance reads them back at launch and the keyboard looks and sounds the same as it did a second ago.
Transient interface state lives in memory by default and stays that way unless the developer deliberately decides it is worth saving. That is a judgement rather than an oversight, and not everything should be carried forward. A theme obviously should. A caps lock probably should not: coming back to the keyboard three hours later still locked in capitals would be worse than the reset.
iOS restores essentially nothing of the extension’s internals for you. What it does supply on every launch is the field’s own context — the text around the cursor, the keyboard type, the return key label and the autocapitalisation preference. That is why the first letter of a new sentence is capitalised on a keyboard that just started with no memory at all: the behaviour comes from the field, not from anything the keyboard remembered.
The same mechanism is why keyboards are cheap
A keyboard that held its state across app switches would be a keyboard still running while you are not typing, and the whole phone would carry the weight of that.
- No background execution. A keyboard cannot use battery while you are not typing, because it is not running while you are not typing.
- Memory is returned to the system the instant the keyboard hides — which matters, given how small the extension budget is to begin with.
- A keyboard cannot observe anything between sessions, because there is no process there to observe with. The privacy boundary and the battery behaviour come from the same design.
- The cost is a launch on the first appearance in a session, and the loss of any state the keyboard did not choose to persist.
If something you expect to persist does not — a language selection, a theme, a sound — that is worth reporting, because it belongs on the saved side of the line. A caps lock dropping when you leave the app is the system working as designed.
Where Kibo fits
Kibo writes its choices rather than holding them. The theme, key sound, backlight effect, enabled typing languages and the separate Key Sounds and Haptic Feedback switches are stored, so a fresh instance of the keyboard comes back configured exactly as you left it, in whatever app you open next.
The settings panel sits on the keyboard itself, so changing any of that does not mean leaving the conversation you are in — and because the choice is saved at the moment you make it, dismissing the keyboard immediately afterwards does not undo it. Transient state, such as which emoji tab was open, resets with the process, which is the same behaviour every keyboard extension on iOS has.
Frequently asked questions
Why does caps lock turn off when I switch apps?
Because the keyboard extension is unloaded when the keyboard is dismissed. Shift state is held in memory rather than saved, so a fresh instance starts from the field’s own capitalisation rules instead.
Why do my keyboard settings survive but the emoji tab does not?
Settings are written to shared storage when you change them and read back at launch. An open tab or a scroll position is in-memory interface state, and it disappears with the process unless it was deliberately persisted.
Is the keyboard running in the background between messages?
No. iOS starts the extension when a text field needs a keyboard and shuts it down when the keyboard hides. That is why it uses no battery when you are not typing.
Does this mean my theme resets too?
It should not. A theme is a saved setting rather than transient state, so it is read back each time the keyboard launches. A theme that genuinely does not stick is a bug rather than the lifecycle.
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.