If you’re like most people, you use Google’s Gboard keyboard on your Android phone to type text and symbols. But if you’re like me, you’ve probably been frustrated that it takes a long time to access the symbols menu. Here’s how to speed up your access to symbols in Gboard:

  1. Open Gboard and tap the three lines in the top left corner of the keyboard.
  2. In the “Symbols” section, tap the “Menu” button (the three lines in the top right corner).
  3. In the “Symbols Menu,” tap “Access Symbols.”
  4. In the “Access Symbols” screen, tap any of the icons at the bottom of the screen to open a list of symbols corresponding to that symbol type. ..

If you’re like me, you can’t stand having to switch keyboard modes just to hit an exclamation mark or comma in the middle of a body of text. The thing is, this is Gboard’s default setting. Fortunately, there’s a really simple way to fix it.

RELATED: How to Add a Shortcut to Google Keyboard’s Settings in Android’s App Drawer

You’ll need to jump into Gboard’s settings menu—there are a couple of ways to do this.

Open the keyboard in a text field, then long-press the button to the right of the symbols key and slide over to the gear icon. Then choose “Gboard Keyboard Settings.”

Alternatively, open the app drawer and find the Gboard entry (if you can’t find it, it’s because it hasn’t been enabled).

Either way is two means to the same end, so it doesn’t really matter which way you go about it.

In Gboard’s menu, select Preferences.

Scroll all the way to the bottom and enable “Long press for symbols.”

Bam, that’s all there is to it. Your keyboard will go from this:

To this:

So you can simply long-press a button to use its symbol, which honestly just makes life a lot easier.