It appears to be so - I personally don’t have an iPad to check. Strange decision to omit it in that particular mode given it’s a parallel to iPhone keyboards, so I’d have to assume it was a deliberate omission. User experience (too many grandparents triggering it by accident)? Who knows.

Now we know we have to pinch it to make it float and then slide that way. TIL!

But if you’re using a newer iPhone, definitely able to slide as long as the owner haven’t turned it off.

Unfortunately no easy way about it :(

You can sorta increase keyboard size by going into accessibility settings > display to increase text size as a whole.

As for additional number line on iPhones, not possible without third party keyboard afaik, but there’s a couple tricks (link to reddit comment) to speed up typing numbers. iPad has the number line in their keyboard.

I’m just used to not having these features in exchange for generally much better integration of autofill passwords etc. I have an android tablet to compare with & it’s a pain to have to switch over to a dedicated keyboard to access my passwords & back because swiftkey borks it most of the time (I use keepass as a password manager). The keyboard also auto-detects those pesky SMS OTPs, which is a small convenience but surprisingly satisfying to not have to flip apps/squint at the number in my notifs to slowly input it. Pros & cons I guess.

Slide to type had been available since ios 13 for years now. What other platforms are you referring to besides iphones & ipads which both use ios?

3rd party keyboards exist for iOS - I used to use them too. Keyboards can access every app that you use a keyboard in, so basically everything from your passwords to credit card can be logged. There’d be a popup warning about it on installation that everyone ignores.

But the native keyboard does adopt parts of other good apps + lack of substantial development in said apps (looking at you, Swiftkey iOS). Once the native keyboard added slide to type + spacebar navigation years back, third party keyboards lost their lustre for me lol.

Technically Apple could log all our keypresses too. It’s just a matter of whether that sort of data is worth it for them to collect, or are they prioritising security with their current focuses on privacy features in newer updates.