Google launched their Chrome browser for iOS last week and it has been a hit among the iDevice users. However, it lacks top level domain (TLD) keyboard shortcuts and brings its own custom keyboard layout. Google?s Chrome for iOS lacks shortcuts which were present in Mobile Safar where users can tap and hold the ?.com? button to see a different list of TLDs such as .net etc. Luckily for us, the jailbreak developers have made a fix for this in the form of ChromeURL. This is a new Cydia tweak which has only a single function; replace the custom Chrome keyboard with that present in the stock Mobile Safari browser.
As seen from the screenshot, the keyboard will change when the user is in the URL text field so that it matches the one in Mobile Safari. Furthermore, the Chrome keyboard only allows you to pick ?.com? from the URL while the new (in this case) keyboard of Mobile Safari will allow you to pick other TLD?s such as ?.gov,? ?.edu,? and ?.org.? The Safari replacement keyboard also takes up less space as compared to the custom Chrome keyboard.
If you decide to go with Chrome custom keyboard, you have to manually change the three characters in the URL for the desired results. Using the Safari keyboard will save time spent in typing and makes the Web browsing experience faster and better. Trust me it gets annoying to manually type characters over and over again. Other benefits of using this tweak include a better view of the window between the keyboard and the URL bar since the top row from the keyboard disappears. This allows you to see more of the web page and rather than the keyboard itself. The tweak doesn?t have any options to configure.
I hope we don?t have to use ChromeURL in forever as it doesn?t have symbols as the custom Chrome keyboard and you have to switch into symbol view. Let?s hope that Google implements a hold down feature that allows us to access top level domains from the custom Chrome keyboard. ChromeURL can be downloaded from Cydia?s ModMyi repo free of charge!
