It looks squashed, but remains surprisingly usable due to strong autocorrect (in use, it’s somehow reminiscent of a great dumbphone keyboard), and leaves more screen space for content.įor anyone sick of being unable to find extended characters on iOS, two options: unicodr has a handy and effective search but otherwise a slightly awkward page-based nav Symbols is like Emoji++ but for Unicode – very elegant, but lacking search. It doesn’t need ‘full access’ either.Īlthough it offers themes (its reason for ‘full access’), Minuum’s big feature is markedly shrinking the keyboard’s height. Instead of pages of icons, you get a big scrollable list with a speed-search bar, and can tap-hold any character to add it to your favourites. Still, it beats shoe-horning text-expansion into Settings > Keyboard > Shortcuts, and is a decent alternative keyboard to have ready if you regularly need access to boilerplate copy.įor the emoji-obsessed, Emoji++ is a perfect replacement for Apple’s equivalent keyboard. The keyboard is a touch basic, with autocorrect in part relying on a list of autocorrect snippets additionally, the parent app appears unstable on trying to format snippets beyond bold/italic type or text size. The iOS keyboard offers a cunning workaround, bringing snippets to any app, hugely increasing TextExpander’s scope. But on iOS, this always felt pointless, because few apps added direct support for the most part, you had to write within the TextExpander app itself to expand snippets. You define abbreviations (such as addr1), which then expand in any app to become frequently used blocks of text (such as an address), optionally including dynamic variables such as the time and date. On the Mac, TextExpander is a useful time-saver. But force your way through the tutorial, stick with it (and dial down the animation) and you end up with a clever, customisable typing experience with all kinds of neat tricks (quickpaste, Spacebar cursor, layout adjustment, flick autocomplete, and more). On the initial install, it’s a bewildering journey into a trippy undulating keyboard with pretty out-there ideas about digital typing. However, for your initial 79p, you do get better access to a range of accented letters, an optional number pad, and a keyboard that’ll work without full access being activated. Swype is very similar in concept to SwiftKey, except you have to pay for it, and you get themes (most of which you have to pay for as well). It’s surprisingly accurate and learns from you over time. SwiftKey does away with such nonsense, instead enabling you to swipe in the vague areas the keys should be and let the app figure out what you meant. Hunting and pecking tiny keys on a virtual keyboard isn’t much fun. This doesn’t always seem essential for functionality, so you should remain vigilant. There are also questions regarding data policies with some developers who require ‘full access’ for their keyboards. This means there’s no point in having loads of keyboards installed – and especially novelty ones – because it takes an age to cycle through them. Others usually (but not always) have a globe key, but it merely moves you to the next keyboard in the list. And as it turns out, iOS keyboards aren’t without limitations.Īpple’s default must be used for password fields, and the ‘globe’ key that displays a full list of active keyboards is only available to Apple’s own keyboards. We were surprised Apple allowed third-party keyboards in iOS even as the system became more extensible, the potential for daft, hideous keyboards didn’t seem very Apple.
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