Clicks keyboard case review: Supercharge your iPhone productivity

Clicks keyboard case for iPhone

Rating: 4 Stars

The Clicks keyboard case brings the physical keyboard back to the phone, while adding helpful new features.

Skip To Our Expert Review Rating: 4 StarsSkip To Our Expert Review

Pros

Premium design
Satisfying tactile feel
Helpful software features
Backlit keys

Cons

A little pricey
Can take some time to get used to

Buy FromList PriceSale Price

Clicks

$139

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Unlike some of my peers in the tech review game, I never really had the option of buying a BlackBerry. I was 13 years old when the original iPhone was announced, and by the time I was an adult with enough money to buy whatever phone I wanted, BlackBerry was all but dead. But that doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes wish we could return to those times. I had friends who loved their BlackBerrys, and much of that had to do with the keyboard.

But now, 15 years after they started going out of fashion and eight years after the launch of the last keyboard-toting BlackBerry model, there’s a way to get that awesome Blackberry-feeling keyboard, on your smartphone. How? With the Clicks Keyboard.

I suppose now is probably a good time to disclose that Michael Fisher, perhaps better known as Mr. Mobile on YouTube and one of the two founders of Clicks, is a good friend of mine. Take that however you want. Am I biased towards my friend? Probably — but also, no one is forcing me to review the case, and if I didn’t like it, I likely just wouldn’t publish this review.

Thankfully, however, I’m not in that position. Clicks certainly isn’t for everyone, but for the right person, it’s a dream come true.

Design

It wouldn’t have been surprising to see Clicks simply copy the design of the best-known BlackBerry keyboards and call it a day. Thankfully, that’s not what it did — the keyboard is a fully QWERTY keyboard, like on a BlackBerry, but it looks a whole lot more fun too, and brings in some handy new features.

The most obvious change is the fact that the keys are circular instead of square, which helps give the keyboard a unique and more interesting look. I love this — again, it’s a cool way to give the case a modern vibe. It does, of course, impact how the keyboard feels too, but we’ll get into that later. It comes in some fun colors as well. You could get the understated Onyx, but I opted for Spice, which is a kind of dark orange. There’s also Surf, which is a light blue and also looks great.

The case is premium and well-built. It’s made from a nice textured polycarbonate that feels strong and sturdy. On the back, towards the bottom of the case, there’s a vegan leather panel that helps give the keyboard a little more grip. And, the case supports MagSafe — so you can use attach MagSafe accessories to the back of it. On the iPhone model, the volume, Action, and power buttons are controlled using buttons built into the case, while there’s a cutout for the Camera Control. I will say, with the extra space between the bottom of your device and the Camera Control, the Camera Control feels even less natural to use in horizontal mode, but that’s certainly not Clicks’ fault, and there isn’t much that could be done to solve that issue.

When I first put the case on my phone, the power button felt a little stiff, and at times, the button in the case kept the power button on my phone held down. I was able to easily remedy this by taking the case off and pushing back on the case’s power button a little, which seemed to loosen it up.

Thankfully, the keys on the keyboard are backlit too — so you can continue to use the case in the dark, like you would with the on-screen keyboard. The keyboard accessory attaches to your phone through USB-C, and you’ll need to kind of bend the case to get the connector into your phone safely, but this wasn’t difficult.

The main downsides associated with design simply have to do with the fact that all of a sudden, your phone is going to be a lot taller. That, of course, is kind of the point, so you probably won’t see it as a downside when you buy the case. But, it’s worth keeping in mind that your phone may not attach as easily to MagSafe charging stands in a vertical position. And unless you have quite deep pockets, it could start to stick out the top of your pocket. Again, the extra space is the whole point of this case, but it’s still worth keeping in mind.

To date, the Clicks keyboard has only been available for the iPhone, with models for the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max, and all four models of the iPhone 15 and iPhone 16. That, however, is now changing with the release of Clicks cases for Android devices. So far, Clicks is announcing a version of the case for the Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro, Galaxy S25, and 2024 Motorola Razr+. The Razr+ model looks particularly cool, especially considering the fact that some of the downsides of having a taller phone aren’t quite as much of a problem with a foldable.

Keyboard feel

It’s worth putting in a few days of getting used to the feel of Clicks before you make any judgments on it. Moving from a touchscreen to a physical keyboard on a smartphone is definitely an adjustment. But, if you put that time in, you’ll start to get used to it. That’s when you’ll remember what makes physical keyboards, even small ones, so great.

The learning curve mostly comes down to the size of the keys. At first, I found it very easy to accidentally press the wrong button on the keyboard — but as I got used to the layout and the feel, that happened less and less. I can’t help but wonder if this would have been minimized with BlackBerry-style square keys though, considering the fact that they would take up that extra millimeter or so of space.

On top of the spacing and clicking, you’ll also have to get used to some of the keyboard shortcuts. You’ll access numbers and punctuation using the “123” button built into the case. Again, you’ll adjust relatively quickly, but it can slow down your typing at first.

After adjusting, I loved the experience of using the keyboard. It made for a much more tactile and satisfying typing experience — something that has been missed, even on phones with the best haptic feedback, like the iPhone.

I never did quite adjust to typing with one hand, though. I’ve gotten accustomed to swipe typing when using one hand, and you obviously can’t do that with a physical keyboard. Thankfully, there is a button on the keyboard that brings the on-screen keyboard back up, so you can still swipe type if you need to — though the weight distribution makes it a little trickier than it otherwise would be.

Features and app

Beyond the tactile feel, there are some real benefits to taking a keyboard off the screen — like the fact that all of a sudden, when you’re typing, you can see a whole lot more content. You’ll see more text when typing in a note or in e-mails, which can be helpful when you need to refer back to content on the screen.

The keyboard also supports standard iOS shortcuts, which can help level up your productivity. For example, you can hit Command + N to start a new e-mail in the Mail app or open a new tab in Safari, which is handy if you’re used to those shortcuts on a Mac. New for the iPhone 16 model is support for data transfer without the need to take the case off your phone. This can be helpful for using a wired CarPlay connection, for example.

The experience of using Clicks goes beyond the physical keyboard too — there’s a Clicks app that you’ll use to customize your experience, and enable additional features. Through the app, you can adjust the brightness of the backlit keys, and enable Caps Lock and Alt Lock features, which can come in handy when typing out things like phone numbers, for example.

And, there are some pretty cool more advanced features too. Notably, there’s a Cursor Mode that lets you use WASD and IJKL keys as direction keys. It’s pretty neat.

My personal favorite feature, though? Using the keyboard to trigger Siri Shortcuts. This feature lets you trigger Shortcuts by pressing the Clicks button and another key — so you can trigger the opening of certain apps, functions within apps, and more. This is perhaps the feature that could unlock the most productivity for you. After all, Apple’s Action Button is a neat way to get customizable physical controls on an iPhone, but the Action Button only supports one function. Using Clicks for Shortcuts does take some effort to get it all set up — you’ll have to follow Clicks’ instructions to tweak your iPhone’s accessibility settings and then set keyboard shortcuts for each of the Apple shortcuts that you want to be able to control. I’ve definitely found it worth it, and to be fair, setting it all up only took a few minutes.

Generally speaking, Click offers a range of helpful features that can help supercharge your productivity.

Battery

It is worth mentioning, of course, that as a USB-C connected accessory with backlights, the Clicks keyboard does use some of your phone’s battery. When I first tried to check how much battery it used in my iPhone’s battery settings, it seemed as though it was drawing quite a bit of power. However, I wasn’t necessarily experiencing much quicker battery draw than I was before using the keyboard. This seems to be an issue with how iOS reports battery usage, rather than an issue with the case actually using a lot of energy. Clicks sent me a statement about the issue, too.

“The way iPhone models with USB-C connections display battery usage for USB-C accessories is misleading. Anytime a USB-C accessory is connected to your iPhone, iOS deems it to be ‘active’, and that time is reflected as battery usage. This applies to all USB-C accessories, including wired USB-C headphones, for example.

Consider, for example, that if you’re charging your iPhone while Clicks is connected, the battery chart will still appear to show power being recorded by the phone. In actuality, Clicks use of iPhone battery is quite low. In testing Clicks on USB-C-enabled iPhones, we found the background power consumption tied to USB-C hosting to be only 0.5% (on Pro Max) to 1% (on Pro) per hour, depending on battery size. When in heavy use, Clicks active power consumption generally ranges between 1.75% to 3.45% per hour, depending on battery size and whether or not the keyboard backlight is being used.

Finally, because iPhone 14 series models use Lightening connectors vs. USB-C, different protocols were used, resulting in negligible background power usage.”

Again, anecdotally, I didn’t experience a radical difference in how quickly my phone ran out of power with the keyboard connected to before it was connected. And, you can tweak battery settings in the app too — there’s a whole battery saving mode, which cuts the connection between the keyboard and the phone after a set period of time. Backlight brightness will also impact battery life.

Conclusions

The Clicks keyboard is a unique accessory that makes typing a whole lot more tactile while offering helpful productivity tools. It’s not for everyone — it’ll take a while to get used to the feel, and even then, you’ll have to contend with the added height of your phone, both in your pocket, and when attached to accessories like MagSafe charging stands. But if you don’t mind those things and like the idea of the return of the physical keyboard to your phone, then you’ll absolutely love what Clicks has to offer.

The competition

There are some other keyboard cases for the iPhone, but for the most part, they’re cheap-feeling and certainly not as versatile as Clicks. Clicks is a little pricey, but if you’re willing to spend the cash, it’s the way to go.