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Best Keyboard?

  • Swype

    Votes: 97 22.9%
  • Fleksy

    Votes: 29 6.8%
  • TouchPal

    Votes: 21 5.0%
  • Swiftkey

    Votes: 263 62.0%
  • Minuum

    Votes: 14 3.3%

  • Total voters
    424
No one likes Fleksy?? Hahahaha. :D I personally like Fleksy because its auto-correct has been pretty good so far, and although there is a slight learning curve to the gestures, I'm starting to get used to it and am learning to use it efficiently. It also looks better (imo) than other keyboards.

Fleksy has terrible auto correct. You will come to find this out when using it for a longer period of time. It literally auto corrects the correct words to something that absolutely doesn't even fit in the context of what you are typing.
 
Anyone know of a calendar like Fantastical that has numbers across the top?
 

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1.Voice dictation is not allowed (via Apple regulations, keyboards are not able to access the microphone).

Could you give more info on this, i.e., do you mean keyboards are not able to access Siri or do you mean the actual hardware (microphone)? If it's the microphone, it doesn't seem to make sense.
 
When you switch away from apples keyboard, the microphone button disappears. So if you are toying or swiping away and decide to dictate a bit, you have to stitch over to the apple keyboard first.
 
When you switch away from apples keyboard, the microphone button disappears. So if you are toying or swiping away and decide to dictate a bit, you have to stitch over to the apple keyboard first.
True, but I'm wondering if someone could build a microphone into their keyboard and use Apple's hardware, but just with their own voice recognition program. It's a shame Apple won't share that feature with other keyboard developers. Perhaps I'm in the minority, but I like using the voice dictation and that's why I'm for the most part only using the Apple keyboard.
 
Okay I just installed ikeywi 1.0.2. It's not crashing on me anymore, how about you? Drag selection is way fast too.


If I'm honest, almost everything is crashing these days. Even this Tapatalk I'm using to reply keeps crashing and going to home screen. It's only now that I really appreciate the stability of iOS 7. My 4 used to crash a lot and that was probably iOS6 but was happy that the 5S was pretty good. But now...

So am not so sure I can blame the apps now and not Apple boffins. My battery dies before lunchtime from texts alone and a few emails and crashes a plenty. Having said that, battery always dreadful on my 5S. Will update the ikeywi now and let you know. When I tried before the numbers keys top line never stayed put. I want it there all the time. How's it going for you?
 
True, but I'm wondering if someone could build a microphone into their keyboard and use Apple's hardware, but just with their own voice recognition program. It's a shame Apple won't share that feature with other keyboard developers. Perhaps I'm in the minority, but I like using the voice dictation and that's why I'm for the most part only using the Apple keyboard.

Theres no question it would be better to have the mic button everwhere. Even if apple just allowed devs to add an apple button with apple servers and no actual dev access. But this doesn't seem possible this year.


If I'm honest, almost everything is crashing these days...

Will update the ikeywi now and let you know. When I tried before the numbers keys top line never stayed put. I want it there all the time. How's it going for you?

Well, numbers are only present along with lower case numbers. So you have to type past your first letter or press the shift/case key to get the numbers row. Is that what you mean?


This new one looks pretty cool, too:

Blink Keyboard
http://www.idownloadblog.com/2014/10/09/blink-keyboard/

For users struggling with one-handed typing on the larger iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus screen, this may be the keyboard that saves you. Keep in mind that it has a few bugs to work out, but the developer seems to be willing to make updates along the way.
 
Which keyboard has the best swipe feature?

I really liked Path Input on iOS7 (as a swype app) and still love it in iOS8 as a swype keyboard throughout the complete system. The iPad version (yes for some reason two different apps) is even available for free untill the 11th of October and has a desktop keyboard like look. I use it only on my iPhone and love that it supports Dutch right from the launch in iOS8 and can work perfectly without full access.

Anyone know of a calendar like Fantastical that has numbers across the top?

A calendar or a keyboard? This topic is regarding keyboards. Keyboards that have a number row permanently on top an an extra row are:
iKeywi (needs full access), Simple Keyboard (optional full access) and AI.Type.
Other keyboards have a quick way to go to the numbers (Swype, Path Input, Touchpal, GO Keyboard)
 
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I'd be curious how many people picking one choice has actually tried out any of the others?

For example, how many people picking SwiftKey (which is free) have also used Swype (which is not free)? Because if you haven't tried both, your opinion is worthless.

After trying out SwiftKey, I realise that third party keyboards on iOS are not as refined and feature rich as on Android. For that reason, I did not bother wasting my time and money trying other third party keyboards on iOS. When I see that third party keyboards have advanced and have fixed many of the issues, then I will try some others.

Which keyboard has the best swipe feature?

Swype and it's not even a contest.

Well it actually is a contest since SwiftKey has the same accuracy and speed

Swype had a big head start over other third party keyboards with regard to gesture typing (Swyping seems to have become the generally used term). I haven't tried Swype on iOS yet. On Android, I find Swype is by far the best.
 
Well, numbers are only present along with lower case numbers. So you have to type past your first letter or press the shift/case key to get the numbers row. Is that what you mean?


This new one looks pretty cool, too:

Blink Keyboard
http://www.idownloadblog.com/2014/10/09/blink-keyboard/


Yep. That does. None of them have been faultless yet. But like I say. Not always keys related. I think iOS8 has been a major disappointment. They ironed out most of 7 bugs. Let's see what comes with 8 mk2
 
I have tried swiftkey, swipe and fleksy.

Of the three, I find that Fleksy seems to offer the best autocorrection (whatever nonsense I throw at it, it somehow manages to correct it into the word I want). However, I can't seem to get the hang of the gestures. Swiping forward to insert a space feels cumbersome when I want to space twice for a full stop. The swipe-back-to-delete function is quite hit-and-miss. Many times, I swipe back to erase my last letter, only to have the entire word deleted. I still can't get used to swiping to insert the suggested words, or how to cycle between them. The option to adjust the height of the keyboard feels weird as well. The taller keyboard blocks too much of the screen of my 5s, while the lower keyboard feels to cramp to type comfortably.

Between Swiftkey and Swype, Swiftkey somehow feels a bit smoother when swiping, though both still lag horribly when I am trying to bring them up. Overall, the experience of swiping feels smoother than pecking at individual letters, but I don't feel like I am typing any faster (most notably because I still need to manually process the direction to swipe even before I swipe, so it's far from intuitive). Maybe it will get better with practice?

Kaomoji isn't available in my country, and text expander is a little too expensive for me to consider. I have decided to rely more on the stock keyboard.
 
I've been thinking about why the stock keyboard doesn't have more features like the 3rd party keyboards, swipe, touch & hold, and many others, then, it occurred to me that this is as much as we are going to get with the stock keyboard because of one simple fact, Apple gets 30% of every paid installed 3rd party keyboard, if Apple made the stock keyboard with all the third party options, the sales of 3rd party keyboards would be minimal.

I don't know how many downloads Swype has, but in less than a week it was the No. 1 paid app and 30% of that goes to Apple, I bet that's a lot of money.

Agreed. Same with calculator apps on the iPad.:mad:
 
Okay, loving Path Input on the iPad. Because the alpha keyboard is narrower than the other keyboards, it is much quicker to swipe on for the iPad. This and the always on, numeric keyboard to the right make it a great keyboard to work with.

Still Touchpal on the iPhone though.
 
Seeing as the default keyboard has no predicitive suggestions when set to Norwegian (go figure), SwiftKey has now become the third party keyboard I find myself using the most out of all the ones I've installed so far. I love how SwiftKey makes it faster to write in English and Norwegian (and pretty much any other language I'd feel like writing in) and it just works. Others like Swype take some getting used to but they're neat to have nonetheless. But so far, SwiftKey is hands down my favorite.
 
After switching between Swiftkey & Swype since the launch, I installed Touchpal couple of days ago and for me touchpad is the best.
 
I been using SwiftKey and Swype and Minnum keyboards and they all been very good but now I'm giving Fleksy a try and it just got a update just now it's very accurate and autocorrect works great.
 
Seeing as the default keyboard has no predicitive suggestions when set to Norwegian (go figure), SwiftKey has now become the third party keyboard I find myself using the most out of all the ones I've installed so far. I love how SwiftKey makes it faster to write in English and Norwegian (and pretty much any other language I'd feel like writing in) and it just works. Others like Swype take some getting used to but they're neat to have nonetheless. But so far, SwiftKey is hands down my favorite.

That two language support feature of Swiftkey is really great although i don't trust it myself to give a keyboard full access like Swiftkey. Therefore I keep using Path Input which supports Dutch (and Swiftkey, Swype, Touchpal and AI.type still don't) and works really great without full access.

I find it odd that Swiftkey supports Norwegian although this language is not indicated in the description in the app store and their website (@ supported languages).
 
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