I’ve switched iOS keyboards, and maybe for good. There are a lot of things to love about Google’s new Gboard keyboard for iOS and I have so far only encountered the slightest of downsides. Gboard, like all third party keyboards, does not have access to the dictation button (the microphone to the left of the space bar). To get it back, tap the globe icon to switch back to the original keyboard and the dictation button pops back into place.
Some things I like about Gboard:
– Though some folks have complained that the Roboto font looks out of place (it does look different, no doubt), I actually prefer it. It’s drawn with finer lines and I find it easier to read (and detect boldface in) the suggested text.
– I love the use of boldface in the suggested text. If one of the 3 suggested words is in boldface, hit a space and that word is entered. Hit a backspace and it goes back to what was there before. Sort of like the standard keyboard, but the standard keyboard requires an additional tap to get back to what was there.
– I love slide typing. It works especially well for long words. I have yet to successfully type the word GIF with slide typing, though. Pilot error?
– GIF searching is a nice bonus. I don’t use a lot of GIFs in my tweets, but likely this is because it was too much of a hassle. Gboard makes it super easy to find the GIF you want. Maybe too easy?
– And then, of course, there’s search. Perhaps the best feature of all. Tap the search button, type in your search, tap a result and it’s in your text. Easy peasy.
Some folks have suggested that this keyboard is a wedge into iOS for Google. I see the logic, but I don’t see it as a problem for Apple. If Apple was unhappy with the direction Google took Gboard (if Google changed their privacy terms, for example), it’d be easy enough for Apple to shut that door.
As is, I think Gboard is brilliant and it is now my default iOS keyboard.
UPDATE: Looks like Gboard is US only. At least for the moment.
Must not be available outside of the US as I can’t find it on the App Store.
That’s right. It is US-only for now.
Swiftkey was my favorite until yesterday, but Gboard is definitely better. Only 2 things would make it my ideal keyboard: I like when a long press on a letter on the the top row will give a number (don’t have to switch over to the number screen), and second, if only Apple would add voice-to-text to the API… because of that, I have to leave the native iOS keyboard as an option for using voice.
Why is this US-only? Anyone know?
It only supports English, and autocomplete works differently across different accents / countries, so…
Because Google, like Apple, thinks the US is the whole world. It is just the myopic, US centric syndrome. Once reminded they have customers outside the US, they will open the door.
I want to go full time with it but dictation and 3D touch cursor control are tough to give up. Hopefully Apple can open things up a bit for us…
“Gboard, like all third party keyboards, does not have access to the dictation button (the microphone to the left of the space bar).”
Can’t see how anyone could live without dictation. I just can’t. One of the most used of my iPhone.
The whole Google website (and its other properties such as Blogger) assumes that the country you are in dictates the language you speak. I am a native English speaker, but I live in Thailand. Whenever I first use a computer and go to Google, it comes at me in ภาษาไทย (Thai language). When I first moved here it was worse (it’s slowly improved over the years, and now has a button saying English lower on the page – and I can now read Thai), but this assumption has led to many apps not being available to me simply because they assume that I want them all localised in Thai simply because of where I live.
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To not recognize that the U.S. is one of the two largest cell phone markets in the world and the one that has all the tech companies is myopic was well. It always starts U.S. english, expands to the commonwealth forms of english, and expands from there as the libraries are built up. It also happens to be offered free to the user.