Is The New LinkedIn “Games” Keyboard Ruining Your Experience?
- Olivia Tremblay
- Nov 27
- 4 min read
If you’ve recently opened LinkedIn on your phone to type a quick reply, maybe a comment, a DM, or to participate in the new mini-games, you may have noticed something off. The keyboard feels cramped. It lags. Autocorrect misbehaves. Sometimes it doesn’t even accept certain keystrokes. You wonder:
Why did LinkedIn even build its own keyboard when the system keyboard you’re used to works just fine?
There are several reasons why LinkedIn might have decided to ship a custom keyboard with its “games” or messaging interface, but those same choices end up creating a noticeably worse experience for many users.
Why LinkedIn might build a custom keyboard
Consistency: A custom keyboard lets them maintain the same look-and-feel throughout the app, especially if they mix in stickers, reactions, or other interactive elements.
Feature support: Built-in GIFs, quick-reaction buttons, or mini-game input controls might depend on a custom solution that a normal keyboard can’t provide.
Analytics and experimentation: By capturing input through their own keyboard, LinkedIn can track usage patterns and run A/B tests more easily.
Security or control: Custom keyboards let apps manage clipboard access, detect special inputs, or ensure uniform behavior across devices.
All sensible on LinkedIn’s side, so far so good.
But here’s where it goes downhill.
Why it feels worse than a native keyboard
Mature system keyboards are optimized for speed, autocorrect, swipe typing, reliable punctuation, features users expect. A custom keyboard often misses many of them.
Performance: custom components layered on top of app UI can lag, especially on older or less-powerful phones.
Accessibility: system keyboards integrate well with screen readers and other assistive technologies. Custom ones may break that integration entirely.
Unpredictable behavior: International layouts, punctuation, long-form typing, all of it can go haywire when the keyboard doesn’t behave like the system default.
How to check if the keyboard is the problem
Before blaming your phone or blaming yourself, check these things:
Is typing laggy only inside LinkedIn, and smooth elsewhere? If your keyboard works fine in Messages, Notes, or other apps, but is slow or weird in LinkedIn, that suggests the problem is with LinkedIn’s custom keyboard, not your device.
Does it occur only when using the mini-games, comments, or “messaging” area, but not in other parts of the app? If the issue is isolated to games or comments, that further implicates LinkedIn’s custom input field.
Has the problem started after an app update? Sometimes a recent version may introduce the custom keyboard or regress input behavior.
Does switching to an external keyboard (e.g. Bluetooth or hardware) help, or does it still fail? On some phones or OS versions, hardware keyboards may break entirely inside LinkedIn (especially on iOS) because LinkedIn uses a custom rich-text editor.
If your answer to the above suggests it is LinkedIn’s keyboard, don’t worry; there are practical workarounds.
Try these right now, workarounds to avoid the custom keyboard
Here are some quick ways you can avoid LinkedIn’s problematic keyboard and restore a smoother typing experience:
Use a mobile browser instead of the app, Open LinkedIn in any browser on your phone. The browser typically uses the system keyboard, so typing should behave normally.
Use a hardware or Bluetooth keyboard (if supported). Plug in an external keyboard or pair a Bluetooth one. On many phones this will bypass the in-app keyboard entirely, though on iOS/LinkedIn comments it might still misbehave.
Copy/paste your text from another app. Write your message or comment in a notes app or your phone’s native text editor, then copy and paste it into LinkedIn. This way you rely on a stable, familiar editing environment.
Clear cache or reinstall (Android) / reinstall (iOS). If the issue began after an update, wiping cache or reinstalling might revert to a previous stable input behavior.
If possible: avoid mini-games or UI elements likely to trigger the custom keyboard. For now, stick to basic comments, messages or browsing, until LinkedIn improves their custom keyboard.
If none of the above works, report the bug. Include your device model, OS version, LinkedIn app version, and a screen recording or screenshots showing the lag or keyboard issues. Be specific: mention where it happens (messaging / comments / games), what you did, and what failed.
What a good fix would look like
If I were advising the LinkedIn team (or working on UI/UX), here’s how I’d solve this:
Offer a toggle: Let users switch between system keyboard and in-app keyboard.
Build feature parity: If you insist on a custom keyboard, include swipe typing, autocorrect, predictive text, all the niceties of the system keyboard.
Make sure accessibility tools still work (screen readers, high-contrast mode, screen magnification, etc.).
Roll out UI changes as an opt-in beta, not enforced for everyone.
Listen to user feedback before full deployment, if complaints spike, reconsider replacing the keyboard.
Here's someone else walking through the same problem
If you prefer a visual explanation, this short walkthrough shows the issues with LinkedIn’s default keyboard and some of the workarounds you can try today. Worth a watch.
Conclusion: You don’t have to suffer through a bad keyboard
Yes, LinkedIn likely shipped a custom keyboard to support games, reactions, and in-app features. That might make sense from their side. But for many users, it feels like a downgrade compared with the stable, smooth system keyboards we trust.
The good news: you don’t have to wait for LinkedIn to fix it. Use a browser, a hardware keyboard, copy-paste from another app, or simply avoid the parts of LinkedIn that trigger the custom keyboard.
And if you care, speak up. A clear bug report (with version numbers, device info, reproducible steps, and a short video) is far more useful than vague complaints.
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