Monday Poll: What’s Your Keyboard App of Choice?
  • Posted byby Tim

Monday Poll: What’s Your Keyboard App of Choice?

Before Google Keyboard (now Gboard) was readily available for download on Google Play, there were various keyboard apps I would use all of the time. In particular, there was one during that period I loved very much, that one being Swype. With the news that Swype is being discontinued, though, we wanted to get a feel for what you are using these days.

For me, it’s all about the Gboard life. It may not be the most feature-packed keyboard available, but I don’t find myself mistyping things when swiping and its auto correct functionality seems good. I always appreciate the new features it does get, too, like GIF suggestions and resizing abilities. It’s very handy.

How about you? What’s your keyboard app of choice?

What's your Android keyboard app of choice?

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Written by

Tim

Stumbling upon Droid Life randomly after purchasing a Motorola DROID in late 2009, then setting out to learn everything he could about Android, Tim quickly became an integral part of the site's comment section. After quite some time of strictly commenting on Droid Life, Tim was offered an opportunity to write feature stories for the site, such as custom ROM overviews, as well as interviews with Android community members. Following success of those, Tim became a full time writer and editor for Droid Life, now spending his time on news articles, device reviews, producing videos, and much more. Tim currently resides in Portland, OR with his longtime girlfriend and two wonderful dog children (Loki & Thor). In his spare time, Tim enjoys playing guitar, drinking coffee, practicing photography, and destroying kids on Call of Duty.

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94 Comments

  • I used Swiftkey for a while, but it kept getting more bloated and slower that I gave up on it. Even though I have a faster phone now, I am happy enough with Gboard that I am not tempted to try Swiftkey again.

  • Gboard was great on the Pixel… the Moto Z Play seems to struggle at times with the keyboard, no matter which one. Delayed input and horrible prediction/correction drive me up the wall.

  • Also, the ability to have a permanent number row and cursor arrows make Swiftkey a no brainer for me.

  • Gboard doesn’t know me nearly as well as Swiftkey. Swiftkey has a usually correct suggestion after 1 or 2 characters, Gboard makes me type the whole word most of the time.

  • RIP Swype 🙁 I’ll keep using it as I feel it’s the best, but hopefully someone else will catch up now that they’ve abandoned it…

  • I voted Gboard as that’s what I’ve been using but I liked Swiftkey better when it was working well for me. I still use an old Droid Turbo and it got to the point where with Swiftkey I was picking a prediction but it had lagged or something and chose something completely different. Another annoying thing Swiftkey does now is predicting double words so I’d constantly be choosing the prediction and then get the prediction with the word I chose again.

    I want to like it but Gboard does what I need for now. I’m surprised how much I swipe with it. It still gives me some terrible predictions at times.

  • SwiftKey has for whatever reason been janky for me, regardless of phone. Just isn’t as smooth as Gboard, in my opinion.

  • Dedicated user of SwiftKey! Absolutely depend a lot on it’s predictive capability. The easy use of Gifs are also appreciated!

  • Fun question: I have now tried Swiftkey and GBoard. Neither of which seems to predict me as well as Swype. BUT, I also have over 5 years of swype usage. I suspect Gboard, Swiftkey et al are all probably just as good at any other at predicting the users intent, it’s just that those users have taken the time to invest in TEACHING (via time and usage) those apps their preferences. Hence, switching to another app doesn’t ever work as well for them. Thoughts?

  • just switched to GBoard from Swiftkey – took a bit to get used to but at this point i see no major differences, it’s worked fine for me – just 1 less app i have to install

  • I tried GBoard for a month and had to go back to Swiftkey. The predictions in GBoard can’t hold a candle to Swiftkey. Period.

  • I am all Gboard, but my brother turned me on to Cheetah and it is really customize-able. At the end of week, I went back to Gboard. That is typically how it goes when I switch.

  • I’ve been using GBoard on my phone and Swype on my tablet for a while now. I had been Swiftkey on everything but something they did pissed me off, and now I can’t remember what. Might be time to try it again on my tablet and see what happens.

      • No, I’m not that petty. It was something functional, I think related to learning words. I’m pretty sure it stopped remembering words I tried to reach it, whether I did it through the keyboard while typing something or manually added it to the dictionary.

  • It does make one wonder what keyboard would be most popular if people knew how to spell and didnt need auto correction. Then the keyboard could be rated on speed and not the ability to make up for people being lazy lol

    • The issue at least for me isn’t that it auto-corrects my inability to type the word correct as it is more that i have fat fingers and the buttons in single hand mode are a bit small and I can “fat finger” the wrong letter. That being said I cant speak on others ability to spell.

  • I was a Swiftkey onl guy, but then Google began updating Gboard to the point where it became a valid replacement.

  • I’m happy with AnySoftKeyboard. Open source, simple, and light. Very few permissions, and nothing shady going on with user data.

  • Android phone user, but work supplies an iPad. I have to admit, the iOS alt entry (numbers and level 1 punctuation) approach of the pull down is the fastest input I have ever used and it becomes second nature after a little. I wish that would come to Gboard.

  • I have both and use both Swiftkey and GBoard. Swiftkey is my main keyboard for now. GBoard is slowly getting to the point I may switch.I wish GBoard had better themes. (not a deal breaker)

  • So to pick one over another you have to have tried at least a few of them right? I’m thinking that if Gboard is 1st place that means that people haven’t ever tried SwiftKey. I honestly tried going to Gboard but seriously it doesn’t stand a chance. The swipe to erase and the quick swipe for question mark and exclamation mark helps me type incredibly fast!

  • gboard. i have autocorrect issues with swiftkey….gboard seems to be better for me in every way.

  • I used Swype since my old droid but then when Nuance bought them it started running slower and getting words wrong.
    Eventually they integrated Dragon voice, which for PC is top notch, on android it falls flat compared to Google voice typing. Always cutting the first words off and some words incorrectly. I reset the app every few months, then I resync and it freaks out.
    I love my star trek themes on Swype, but moving on to newer software I can get any theme or background I want.
    Functionality is what’s required.
    I’ve started defaulting to Gboard for my daily but prefer Swype on my tablet, it seems to type better on the larger screen.
    I dabbled with many other keyboards, stock/swype/gboard/multiling/touchpal mainly,
    I’ve never gotten the appeal or hang of fleksy or given it more than a few minutes each try.
    Swiftkey has given me excitement many times over the years with their betas and neural learning but has often crapped out on correct predictions leading me to switch back to these others.
    Gboard often skipping learned personal words which Swype does, but having garbage voice engine.
    It gets tiring switching in mid sentence. I don’t run many ROMs these days so is eeasie to keep things running smoothly, though less fun.
    Currently I’m giving grammarly and doro a chance in the mix, adding cheetah and chrooma now which I’ve never tried.

    Probably just stick with gboard, though I love the simplicity and customizations of Multiling O.
    Sad to find Swype has died, I was almost this sad when the old apk from my droid stopped working on kk 4.4 Sayonara and RIP.

      • Ikr?! I have a diff one on each device.
        Old “toy” phone has TOS
        newer phone has TNG
        Daily phone has different as my mood lol
        Tablet has TNG, I believe, to go with my LCARS theme.
        My mom has Spock 24/7 but hates the lack of key borders.
        I’m thinking about taking screenshots of them to input into some other custom keyboard eventually.
        After it stops working.

        • FWIW, I suspect it’s just going off support. It’s still available for download on the store, their website news feed doesn’t talk about it, etc. I’m not saying it is NOT going away, but there is little evidence of it at this time.

  • I’m all about the theming and I just love Chrooma keyboard’s color adjustment to the app that I using. Best feature IMO

  • Nothing beats SwiftKey’s predictive text. Nothing. But it just got too slow and I had to give it up. Gboard pretty much sucks at predictive text, but ticks all the other boxes beautifully.

    • Totally agree. if gboard stole/borrowed/bought swiftkey’s prediction juice there wouldnt be anything close to how brilliant of a keyboard it would be. Are you listening, larry??????

    • i dont use swiftkey b/c the swipe is terrible. never gets any word right for me. gboard is correct more often

  • I am a GBoard user, but I am very surprised that Chrooma is in dead last! I would have thought that it would be in the middle.

  • I switched to an iPhone this year because all my friends have one and I absolutely HATE it. I’m using Gboard and it doesn’t have the same functionality as the Android version, like long pressing the top row of letters for numbers. I was an avid Gboard user on Android which I’ll be switching back to as soon I can upgrade, or win a V30 in the current giveaway (*wink**wink*). I liked using Fleksy when I’m able to type with both hands. The gestures were pretty nice. If Fleksy ever gets swipe functionality I’ll probably give it another try.

  • I was looking for “yellow Post-It notes” or even smoke signals… but they were not a poll choice.

  • I started of with Swype cause they were the first with the swipe and had awesome prediction. This was OG Droid days so I thought it was the best. But the swiping never was really better then the hunt and peck for me, and then SwiftKey came along with even better prediction. I used that up until the S6 or 7 switch to Samsungs keyboard so that it worked with Samsungs fingerprint for passwords on their browser which isn’t all that bad by th way.

  • use Gboard everyday, but my fat fingers do miss the fact that SwiftKey would learn where I was wanting to touch vs where I was touching and would mess less stuff up. I have also found suggestions when I murder a word, like am not close at all, to be a little lack luster in the Gboard autocorrect vs SwiftKey’s. But, I stay with it for the gif insertion and emoji features.

    • Your right about Swiftkey. Im lame so i pretty much type pretty much the same thing i could hit “im” and it would predict the rest of the sentence. I wanted to like Gboard but the fact that I couldn’t put gifs on only certain places and the prediction was terrible I couldn’t take it.

  • I just use the stock Samsung keyboard. Never liked SwiftKey & stopped using Swype once I ditched Moto. I might try Gboard since my Note 8’s keyboard won’t be updated until it gets Oreo in November.

  • SwiftKey > GBoard. I want to love gboard, but SwiftKey gets everything right every time and has picked up well on how I text vs gboard which I eventually get frustrated with and switch back

      • I like you was in the same boat but I never gave Gb the chance to thrive and get to know me. Once I did I was set

        • I like that i can set the long press for secondary characters speed. I type quickly so I set the long press speed about 130ms. And the space bar insists the nextnpredictrd word. Can gboard do this? Haven’t tried the appcin awhile so im curious. I want to like it butbswiftkeysworks so well for me

    • Pretty much this. I’m pretty locked in with SwiftKey. I tried Gboard for a week and just couldn’t do it. Swiftkey knows me too well plus muscle memory knowing where things are. Is it as fast as Gboard? No, but it does a lot of things better.

    • For me, it is the dedicated arrow keys that are available in SwiftKey. Whenever I try another keyboard that doesn’t have 4-way arrow keys I just have to go back to SwiftKey.

    • Did SwiftKey ever fix there “no swear words” problem? Anytime I typed a swear word, it would “correct” to something else, even if I told it not to.

    • Glad I’m not the only one. G board is just missing a few little things. Honestly I can’t even remember what it is.

  • I’m a Gboard user from like the first day it was available. Another keyboard I sometimes use is the grammarly keyboard which also wasn’t on the list (I know it’s under other). I would use the grammarly keyboard more if it had a swipe input feature. I’ve also used Swiftkey but prefer Gboard.

  • I am a GBoard user, but I am very surprised that Chrooma is in dead last! I would have thought that it would be in the middle.

  • Gboard for me. I just wish you can reposition it (not just resize) so it can be a bit higher up on these low bezel phones. I believe that’s why the iPhone X keyboard has a large space at the bottom to make it easier to type imo.

  • I placed my vote for SwiftKey. However, I actually use SwiftKey Neural. I was invited to take place in the beta years ago. Is anyone else using SwiftKey Neural?

  • I can’t remember using any other keyboard after Google updated theirs. Used to use thumboard, but that was on 4.x

  • Gboard is great at learning and has too many good features about it to pass up. Gboard all the way.

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    • I would try it but since I don’t have a single complaint with Swiftkey I don’t think I will. I couldn’t imagine a better keyboard. Main thing that I like is being able to put number row on top, or put arrow keys (which I don’t use, but is very nice to turn on temporarily when typing a very long email,) and the emoji/gif button. Not sure if Gboard has any of those, but that’s what’s keeping me, along with great predictive texting. Once it learns a word, I rarely ever see it make the same mistake.

      What features are on Gboard that make you love it?

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    • I used it for a long time, they went to Google Keyboard at one point, tried to go back and hated every second of it heh. I wonder if I should try it again.

      • I hated before too, I just installed again a few days ago after trying gboard and fleksy. SwiftKey is better now, but I it has changed a lot

      • Try it again I’d like to hear your thoughts on it vs other keyboards. Maybe a dedicated post?

  • Fleksy is my daily driver but can’t really ever beat Swiftkey for one-handed/public transportation typing.

    Edit: Have to add that the Fleksy themes are really sexy. The color-changing ones are so awesome.

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