So, up front, I’ll admit I’m one of those guys that gets hung up on tiny, largely irrelevant quirks in apps. Yeah, I’m great fun at parties.
So, what’s your favourite keyboard app? I keep coming back to SwiftKey. I feel like it’s the best typing experience for me, with fairly accurate prediction and correction — although it’s far from perfect, of course. I’ve seen plenty of people complain about it, and apart from Microsoft adding Bing to it, it’s not received much in the way of innovation or useful updates since they bought it.
I particularly like that a long press on the backspace key will delete one whole word at a time, speeding up the longer you hold it down. I simply haven’t found the backspace methods on Gboard or the Samsung keyboard (which used to be Swype I guess?) to be as predictable or reliable. Gboard’s swipe back doesn’t feel predictable in what it will do, and Samsung’s backspace is more like iOS.
I also find SwiftKey to be the best at remembering sequences of words; if I start typing my address, it’ll generally remember each successive word and offer it as the main prediction on the top row. Samsung and Gboard both do that to some extent, but I just haven’t found them to be as reliably predictable in the results.
On the other hand, I hate that SwiftKey doesn’t can’t add an image to its clipboard. Copying and pasting images is a breeze with both Gboard and Samsung’s keyboard, but with SwiftKey I pretty much have to download/screengrab and upload any image I want to insert in a chat or post.
So, that’s it. Rant over! What’s your favourite keyboard app, and does anything irritate you about it?
I prefer SwiftKey. Been using it since 2011 or so. I tried gboard and it’s… Fine? I mainly use SwiftKey for a few reasons:
I’ve tried so many other keyboard, but stick with SwiftKey because of the swiping punctuation next to the space bar. I just can’t get used to anything else.
It’s so habitual at this point and I was really frustrated when something else wouldn’t do that.
Adding a comma or a question mark on iOS is maddening when you’re used to SwiftKey.
I wholeheartedly agree with the swiping punctuation. That and swiping on the space bar to switch keyboard configuration is the main reason for sticking to SwiftKey. Writing in several languages where you need special characters in each language, having to hold down a button in order to switch the keyboard is frustratingly slow.
One extra point is also that SwiftKey inserts the most likely prediction when clicking space. Whenever I’ve used gboard, it’s so frustrating, that my fingers have to click the prediction in order to insert it.