Keyboard, iPad and foldable iPhone
Guides
Balanced adapts to the device in your hand: shortcuts for a keyboard, columns on a large screen, and on a foldable iPhone, the fold itself.
Everything in Balanced works with touch alone. This page collects what’s extra when you have a keyboard, an iPad or a foldable iPhone. The basics of moving around are in Finding your way around.
Keyboard shortcuts
Section titled “Keyboard shortcuts”With a keyboard connected to your iPad or iPhone:
| Shortcut | Does | Where |
|---|---|---|
| ⌘N | New Transaction | In the journal overview and in lists of transactions |
| ⇧⌘N | New Journal | In the journals list |
| ⌥⌘N | Scan Receipt | In the journal overview |
| ⌘↩︎ | Same as ✓ (before iOS 26: Save) | In every editor with ✓, such as a transaction or an account |
| Esc | Close without saving | In the same editors, and while a receipt is being read |
In a text field, plain ↩︎ stays in the field. Add ⌘ to save.
On iPad, Balanced shows its pages side by side in up to three columns:
- Journals: the list of your journals.
- The journal overview, with its Budget, Transactions and Accounts sections.
- The page you open from the overview. When you open a journal, it starts with All Transactions.
With a journal open, you see the overview and the page next to each other. The sidebar button at the top brings the journals list back in. Without a journal open, Balanced shows the journals list so you can pick one.
Foldable iPhone
Section titled “Foldable iPhone”On a foldable iPhone with iOS 27.1 or later, Balanced uses the two halves of the screen. Unfolded, the journal overview sits on one half and the page you open on the other, with the edge between them on the fold. While the phone is half-folded, a soft shadow runs along the fold.
Change months by folding
Section titled “Change months by folding”In the budget editor, the fold works as a dial for the month:
- Open the budget editor with Adjust and hold the phone half-folded, like a book you’re reading.
- Touch and hold the month at the top. You feel a light tap, and the header shows the month before and after.
- Open the phone further to go forward in time, fold it further to go back. Each step through the angle is one month. At the first or last month, you feel a firm bump.
- Lift your finger to stay on the month you’ve reached.
This only works while the phone is half-folded. Opening it flat or closing it ends the gesture, and you stay on the month you reached. You can always pick a month with Month (📅) too.
What you feel and see
Section titled “What you feel and see”Balanced uses the iPhone’s haptics to confirm what you do:
- A short success signal when you save a transaction or an account, set an amount in the budget editor, or when a receipt has been read.
- A warning when a receipt couldn’t be read.
- A light tick when you open the editor for a new transaction or journal, switch months in the budget editor, or switch charts.
And when To assign reaches exactly zero in the current month, confetti falls: you’ve decided what all of your money is for. 🎉