A surprising change to the Gboard Android app may remove two important punctuation marks

Can you write a text or an email without using a period or a comma? The Gboard app for Android now allows you to hide both punctuation keys on your QWERTY keyboard. To do this, open the Messages app and pretend you’re typing a text. On Gboard QWERTY, tap the gear icon to open the Settings menu. Tap Preferences and you’ll see new lists for the comma and period.

Look for these new settings in the Gboard Android app on your phone

These new listings say:

Comma key: display the applicable languages on the keyboard.
Dot Key: Displayed on the keyboard for applicable languages.

Both settings are enabled by default and disabling each will remove the comma and/or period button from the QWERTY keyboard. If both are disabled, all that will be left on the bottom row will be the ?123 button and the Enter key. Helps create an extra long space bar for users.

The latest version of the Gboard app for Android allows users to get rid of the comma and period keys. | Image credit-PhoneArena

If you decide to get rid of the period key, it doesn’t really matter because pressing the space bar twice will add a period to your text or email. As for the comma, if you decide to remove that button, there is nowhere else to type to get a comma in your document, text, or email.

These are the options you have to choose from in the latest version of the Gboard app for Android

So all the particular options you have include:

Keep the Comma key on and keep the Period key on.

Keep the Period key on and turn off the Comma key.

Turn off the Period key and keep the Comma key on.

You can also complicate this further by enabling or disabling the Emoji key.

To reiterate, the comma and period keys are enabled by default, which is absolutely the correct way to Google will offer this feature to Pixel users. You don’t want to be writing a text or an email and, needing to add a comma to a sentence, you search all over Gboard’s QWERTY and can’t find the key.

The change in the Gboard settings menu is available for both the stable and beta versions of the latest Gboard app for Android. The new Settings listings for the Comma key and Period key are in my Pixel 6 Pro working Android 16 QPR2 Beta 3.1. I should note that my Pixel is running Gboard beta version 16.2.4.815623744.

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