Feature Suggestion: Prioritize Arabic Letter Variants Over Symbols on Long Press

New Keys, layout & gestures Arabic

Yah TESTER ·

Hey! I'd like to suggest an improvement to the Arabic keyboard's long-press behavior, especially when "Symbols on long press" is enabled.

Currently, symbols are given priority over Arabic letter variants in the long-press popup, which makes accessing commonly used Arabic letters less convenient.

1. Prioritize Arabic letter variants

For example, when long-pressing ا, the preferred order should be:

أ → إ → آ → symbol

Instead of having the symbol as the first or default selection.

Arabic letter variants are used much more frequently than symbols during normal Arabic typing, so they should take priority.

2. Improve the ي and ى long-press options

  • Long-pressing ي already provides ئ, which is great. ✅
  • However, long-pressing ى should also offer ئ, similar to the native iOS Arabic keyboard.

When "Symbols on long press" is enabled, the Arabic letter variants should still appear before the symbols.

3. Language-aware long-press priority

Ideally, the priority could depend on the active keyboard language:

  • Arabic: Prioritize Arabic letter variants, followed by symbols.
  • English: Keep the existing symbol behavior if appropriate.

This would allow users to keep "Symbols on long press" enabled without sacrificing convenient access to essential Arabic characters.

I've attached screenshots showing the current behavior.

Thanks.

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