An Introduction to Keyboard — Microsoft Swiftkey

A favourite mobile app keyboard of mine is Swiftkey. I’ve used it for many years and in that time it actually was acquired by Microsoft but I still use it as my main day to day keyboard on iPhone and iPad (when I’m not using a physical keyboard).

The great thing about digital keyboards is that it’s so easy to switch between them, making them a more flexible option to have different keyboards for different purposes.

Swiftkey specifically though has three main advantages that make it an essential option for me.

Swipe Input — Inputting keys instead of typing but by gliding your finger across the screen to the next letter. Some other keyboards now have similar features but this keyboard was one of the first and I consider to still be the best at this. By far this increases the input speed on a touch device significantly.

Prediction — The technologies implemented for predictive text and autocorrecting tied with the swiping gestures is amongst the best I’ve seen. Again increasing the speed of input significantly. It’s not just a static prediction algorithm but also learns your own typing style and typical sentence structure.

Multiple Languages — Many keyboards have the ability to install different languages at once but none I’ve used are able to combine them at the same time in such a smooth way. This may be a much lesser need for many but in my own life I’m often typing in English and Latin American Spanish (and often just Spanglish). Swiftkey enables me to type in multiple languages in the same sentence easily.

This post was created with Typeshare