Best virtual keyboard

[piemancoder]

Sorry if this isn't the right place, but it's still keyboard related so I put it under keyboards

Anyways, to the question. What keyboard do you use on your phone/tablet? I really like to use Fleksy, since it looks really nice imo, and a few of the plugins are pretty useful. The gestures are pretty cool too, I always use swipe to delete. Also, I found both easter eggs, so I sort of have to use it

[KaminKevCrew]

Sorry if this isn't the right place, but it's still keyboard related so I put it under keyboards

Anyways, to the question. What keyboard do you use on your phone/tablet? I really like to use Fleksy, since it looks really nice imo, and a few of the plugins are pretty useful. The gestures are pretty cool too, I always use swipe to delete. Also, I found both easter eggs, so I sort of have to use it

I tried flesky when it was still in its very early stages, and I got super frustrated by it, so I stopped using it. I've been a swiftkey user for ages though! Definitely my favorite, and has been for years. Particularly when they finally implemented swype. I use one of the older black and blue colorways that I've been using since I first got swiftkey.

Also, swiftkey happens to (imo) look particularly good with all of the stuff that I have going on with my phone, since I use textra for all messaging, and action center for my home pages, etc. IMO, it all looks very good and I'm quite happy with it. Particularly happy with the fact that I can make any new phone or tablet look pretty much the same as any other since I won't ever be using the stock launcher again. Makes my life a lot easier, being an android user and all.

[raymogi]

I tried a lot of the 3rd party keyboard but always came back to the stock iOS keyboard. I think it's still the best virtual keyboard for me cause I don't use all the extra features (spell check, etc.).

[FLFisherman]

I use the amazing T9 keyboard layout. When I got my smartphone I tried using the regular keyboard, but kept messing up and typing slowly. I type faster on T9 than most people do with the QWERTY on-screen keyboards.

[KaminKevCrew]

I tried a lot of the 3rd party keyboard but always came back to the stock iOS keyboard. I think it's still the best virtual keyboard for me cause I don't use all the extra features (spell check, etc.).

I don't use any of that either (except swipe when one handed typing.) I just found that it has the best punctuation layout for me! (!.,? All being on one button with a simple slide of my finger is awesome!)

[piemancoder]

SwiftKey and Swype were definitely really cool when I used them. I still wish sometimes that Fleksy had some of the features that they had.

[ddot]

I've played around with both SwiftKey and the Google Keyboard for Android.  Gesture typing on both.

I like the text correction algorithms better on the Google Keyboard.  It's hard to pinpoint, but I think SwiftKey tries to correct to a more commonly used word set.  For example, say I want to enter a more obscure word and I make a gesture that's fairly close to what I want.  Google will recognize that the gesture as fairly close and correctly adjust to that word while SwiftKey will assume that I couldn't possibly be trying for a word that obscure, assume I was just sloppy with my gesture and make a bigger adjustment to the closest common word that it can find.  It can work the other way too with Google associating your sloppy gesture with some obscure word you don't want.  Personally I think Google's approach works better for me, but ideally it would be nice to have a setting to adjust the aggressiveness.

The big upside for SwiftKey is you can turn on dedicated arrow keys.  That makes editing and copy/pasting infinitely easier.

Currently using SwiftKey, but the auto correct is really starting to annoy me.

[KaminKevCrew]

I've played around with both SwiftKey and the Google Keyboard for Android.  Gesture typing on both.

I like the text correction algorithms better on the Google Keyboard.  It's hard to pinpoint, but I think SwiftKey tries to correct to a more commonly used word set.  For example, say I want to enter a more obscure word and I make a gesture that's fairly close to what I want.  Google will recognize that the gesture as fairly close and correctly adjust to that word while SwiftKey will assume that I couldn't possibly be trying for a word that obscure, assume I was just sloppy with my gesture and make a bigger adjustment to the closest common word that it can find.  It can work the other way too with Google associating your sloppy gesture with some obscure word you don't want.  Personally I think Google's approach works better for me, but ideally it would be nice to have a setting to adjust the aggressiveness.

The big upside for SwiftKey is you can turn on dedicated arrow keys.  That makes editing and copy/pasting infinitely easier.

Currently using SwiftKey, but the auto correct is really starting to annoy me.

If you consistently use the obscure word, SwiftKey will actually use the right word after a few corrections I like how the dictionary adapts to what you tell it.

[ddot]

If you consistently use the obscure word, SwiftKey will actually use the right word after a few corrections I like how the dictionary adapts to what you tell it.

Interesting.  Maybe I just need to keep using it a little more.  I think SwiftKey would be better if it offered more than 3 auto correct options though.  Something similar to Google with the expanded menu might make correcting things a little less tedious.

[CPTBadAss]

I really enjoy swiftkey.

[Macsmasher]

I use Swiftkey, primarily because it has Colemak. Works fine for me.

[piemancoder]

Sounds like SwiftKey is a popular choice. Maybe I should give it another try.

[ddot]

I use Swiftkey, primarily because it has Colemak. Works fine for me.

Colemak is available with Google Keyboard too and I tried using them in combination with the gesture entry method.  Total fail for me.  Colemak's approach of placing the most common letters on the home row is an advantage on a traditional keyboard, but a huge detriment on a gesture keyboard.  Say you want to type the word "tarnished".  On Qwerty, you have to bounce around between all 3 rows and you end up with a nice pointy and fairly unique shape that can be interpreted accurately.  On Colemak, everything's on the home row and your gesture will just look like a straight line going back and forth.  A far less unique shape and far harder to interpret accurately.  At least that was my experience.

[Macsmasher]

I use Swiftkey, primarily because it has Colemak. Works fine for me.

Colemak is available with Google Keyboard too and I tried using them in combination with the gesture entry method.  Total fail for me.  Colemak's approach of placing the most common letters on the home row is an advantage on a traditional keyboard, but a huge detriment on a gesture keyboard.  Say you want to type the word "tarnished".  On Qwerty, you have to bounce around between all 3 rows and you end up with a nice pointy and fairly unique shape that can be interpreted accurately.  On Colemak, everything's on the home row and your gesture will just look like a straight line going back and forth.  A far less unique shape and far harder to interpret accurately.  At least that was my experience.

That's been my experience as well. But over time, the word prediction has gotten a lot better. And I don't use swipe entry all the time. Just type the first few characters of the word I want and hit spacebar to complete the word. For the little bit of texting I do, it works.

If you do use swipe entry on Colemak, try moving from letter to letter on home row in an arc rather than a straight line. The prediction does much better with that.

[SamirD]

I actually have a physical, real keyboard on my NEC Terrain.  The virtuals just seem to get in the way.

[Belfong]

Google released a new iOS virtual keyboard yesterday: Gboard. You can search Google within the keyboard and paste search result directly. And it supports GIFs too. Anyone using it?