How To Turn Your iPhone's Keyboard Into An Old School iPod Click Wheel

Remember the iPod Classic? That thick little MP3 player with the iconic "click wheel" had a solid 13-year run before Apple unceremoniously discontinued it last year. But if you have an iPhone, you can still relive the old-school magic of the wheel.
A new app, Click Wheel Keyboard, was released for iOS on Monday. It replaces the handset's virtual keyboard with a version of the iPod's wheel, meaning you'll select letters, numbers and emoji by scrolling through a single, horizontal list and tapping a middle "button."
It's almost remarkably inefficient, but you'll probably get a nostalgia trip out of it.
"I grew up with the iPod classic, and have always liked the interaction as a form of input," the keyboard's creator, Adam Bell, told The Huffington Post via email.


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Classic. (Source)
Bell made a version of the app last year with Parteek Saran at iOSDevCamp, a hackathon where hundreds of developers gather to make apps for the iOS platform. He soon realized that Click Wheel Keyboard might have a wider appeal.
He told HuffPost that his fellow developers were amused by the app, inspiring him to release a version in the App Store.

We downloaded Click Wheel Keyboard on an up-to-date iPhone 6 and had trouble getting it to run at first. Bell recommended a fix that worked: Simply give the app "full access" to the iOS keyboard, and it should function.
It's worth trying out, if only to remind yourself that what seems adorably "retro" now was basically cutting-edge technology within the last decade.



HuffPost