Never needed the SwiftKey keyboard as the stock keyboard is great for writing and everything else that you do on your devices. Not sure why it was in the AppStore anyway as it would be a complete waste of space.
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Microsoft Brings Back SwiftKey for iOS, Teases New Features Coming Soon
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Stock keyboard is no bueno when you want to use it with one of the hundreds of languages that Apple has waited some ten years to give predictive text and probably won’t ever give swipe typing on iPhones or Watch.
Google’s Gboard und SwiftKey is the only options for billions of people.
Terrible in terms of privacy. But I can’t let Apple’s penny pinching keep my iPhone typing stuck in pre 2014
Apple won’t spend a cent for full language support across its OSs for hundreds on languages despite it impacting hundreds of millions of users.
We sacrifice our privacy to get predictive and swipe typing because Apple has nothing for us.
Gboard and SwiftKey fills the void for modern typing that’s be available on Android for 10+ years or so.
I like stock keyboard a lot and it switches between Dutch and English US by itself, never have to change the language.
Yup. Won't open with any of my accounts. Oh well...
I can only use my iPhone with SwiftKey. It has many bugs (crashes and freezes several times a day) and it's not perfect but it still beats the built in keyboard by far. It has multi-language support in a single keyboard, swipe to type in all languages (not just English and a select few), and autocorrect seems to be slightly less terrible than iOS.
The iOS keyboard is an absolute joke though. I don't think I could go a single day with it. Just having to switch between keyboard languages on a per-app basis a million times a day is ridiculous, trying to keep track of which keyboard to select for which person before starting a conversation is a nightmare. And the lack of swipe to type and word suggestions in most languages is also lame. It's 2022, not 2007.
When SwiftKey crashes, the iOS keyboard switches back to the built-in keyboard, which you don't always notice until you've tried typing 10 words and they've all been autocorrected to something totally different. A neat trick is that you can completely remove the iOS keyboard leaving only SwiftKey, so when it does crash, it's forced to restart itself.
Gboard is terrible, it crashes maybe 50% of the time I type and freezes completely, making typing impossible until you restart the app.
Swype was all right but I seem to get better autocorrect with SwiftKey.
And... that's about all there is. I don't get why all the other keyboards focus on themes and colors when what we really need is a keyboard that improves the typing experience, not one with poneys in the background.
That said, I really hope they make improvements because to me one of the worst things with using a smartphone is the keyboard.
If I had one wish, it would be this: If I type a word, and I spelt it correctly, please, don't change it. Please. For the love of God. Just leave it. Also, if I type a word and only ONE letter is wrong, just try changing that one letter before adding 7 more. I'm so tired of typing something like "Tablw" and having it be corrected to something like "Tabloids". If that was the word I meant, why would I have just completely forgotten to type 3 whole letters? Seems like an impossible problem to fix after all these years. We now have AI and all kinds of amazing tech yet we're still here typing with the same tech we had when the iPhone came out in 2007.
The iOS keyboard is an absolute joke though. I don't think I could go a single day with it. Just having to switch between keyboard languages on a per-app basis a million times a day is ridiculous, trying to keep track of which keyboard to select for which person before starting a conversation is a nightmare. And the lack of swipe to type and word suggestions in most languages is also lame. It's 2022, not 2007.
When SwiftKey crashes, the iOS keyboard switches back to the built-in keyboard, which you don't always notice until you've tried typing 10 words and they've all been autocorrected to something totally different. A neat trick is that you can completely remove the iOS keyboard leaving only SwiftKey, so when it does crash, it's forced to restart itself.
Gboard is terrible, it crashes maybe 50% of the time I type and freezes completely, making typing impossible until you restart the app.
Swype was all right but I seem to get better autocorrect with SwiftKey.
And... that's about all there is. I don't get why all the other keyboards focus on themes and colors when what we really need is a keyboard that improves the typing experience, not one with poneys in the background.
That said, I really hope they make improvements because to me one of the worst things with using a smartphone is the keyboard.
If I had one wish, it would be this: If I type a word, and I spelt it correctly, please, don't change it. Please. For the love of God. Just leave it. Also, if I type a word and only ONE letter is wrong, just try changing that one letter before adding 7 more. I'm so tired of typing something like "Tablw" and having it be corrected to something like "Tabloids". If that was the word I meant, why would I have just completely forgotten to type 3 whole letters? Seems like an impossible problem to fix after all these years. We now have AI and all kinds of amazing tech yet we're still here typing with the same tech we had when the iPhone came out in 2007.
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Most people do not need hundreds of languages. Google has always and will always make garbage. SwiftKey has never been essential for billions of people.
Typing on the stock keyboard is like playing a really bad game of telephone - all the words are conveyed wrong.
It really is broken I think. Any human would guess what I'm trying to type but iOS just seems to randomly insert words as long as the first letter matches, instead of trying to do the "least damage possible" and only correct what is absolutely necessary. Things like "helo" become "helping", when really it could have just added an extra "L" instead of changing one letter and adding 3. Who programmed this? It also often splits entire legitimate words into two, like "walking" becomes "walk in" or "dancer" becomes "dance her" or something stupid like that. I just don't get it. These are not literal examples but it's the gist of what's going on.
I was a Swiftkey user on Android before they were bought by Microsoft. It got worse basically with their predictive typing and auto correct doing worse job than before. GBoard has surpassed it for me at this point.
I nearly gagged when I read your comment that the stock keyboard is really good! I think it's awful! The biggest issue is the lack of a number row, which I use all the time (including for passwords where many sites require numbers). While there were several 3rd party keyboards, virtually every one of them required you grant full access of your iOS device to that app and the security implications for that are THE WORST. That effectively forces you into using Apple's keyboard simply because it's effectively the only one that's security guaranteed. The original Apple keyboard had to compromise and lose the number row because the original iOS devices (iPod Touch, iPhone) had puny sized screens. All of those devices are no longer supported, all of the screens are now bigger and yet Apple has done nothing about adding a number row back except on iPadOS. If Apple could bring back copy and paste after releasing their original iOS devices without it, they can do the same with a number row on the iPhone keyboard. It's just mental they haven't done this!
Dynamic island is actually quite nice. It’s also sitting in a design and problem space completely orthogonal to the one you’re talking about.
Google had already implemented something similar in the GPay app. The island area at the top acts as a shortcut to the Google Wallet where you can complete a transaction.
I mean, it's kinda helpful but I can always just open up the Google Wallet by swiping down for notifications/quick access.
I've seen Apple's marketing showing the timer. Whoop de do! Google has an icon at the top to tell you if it's running...
...and if you swipe down, you can see the timer without having to go into the app.
I just don't see how the dynamic island or Google's implementation of it is such a great feature. I will interact with the dynamic island very infrequently. You know what I do use quite frequently? The keyboard!
Look how primitive the iOS keyboard is compared to Gboard. Why should I have to break from typing my message to navigate to another section that has numbers and special characters? Why not provide a number row at the top and allow the period to serve as a button for punctuation like Google does?
Early on, phones were small so perhaps they couldn't add a number row. But we don't have that constraint now. In fact, the iPhone 6+ came out in 2014 so Apple has had 8 years to get this right. Pathetic.
My most recent iPhone was the 11 Pro and I'm not upgrading until I see USB-C and changes to the keyboard. I'll stick with Android as my main phone until then. BTW, the Pixel 7 Pro is amazing!
Only for some languages. For others, it doesn't support predictive typing, swiping, etc. For Norwegian I doubt any improvements have been made to the keyboard since 2010 or so.
Yep. I’ve never had to backspace as much on iOS in my entire life. I went from typing 100wpm to probably down into the 50-60’s. It’s so bad I’ve considered switching to Android until they fix it.
I expect Gboard to be discontinued for iOS any day now. There haven’t been any significant updates for years.
Great news. SwiftKey may not be perfect, but it's the best we've got. For all its faults, it's still light years ahead of Apple's horrendous piece of trash.
I'm happy to hear it's back. This means I won't have to bother trying out Gboard, which I wasn't too excited about anyway.
I'm happy to hear it's back. This means I won't have to bother trying out Gboard, which I wasn't too excited about anyway.
*Exactly* this happens to me too. I even made a thread about it but everyone seemed to think I was holding it wrong.
Apple spends so much time and enormous amounts of money on so many projects and just absolutely ignores core functionality.