You can make them look nice or type faster

Sep 18, 2014 21:35 GMT  ·  By

Some of you were pretty happy with the standard iOS Keyboard. Sure, it was better before iOS 7, but all the wrinkles have been smoothed out in iOS 8. Apple added some new functionality to the keyboard that makes it even better. 

The best thing about the standard iOS 8 keyboard is text prediction. There's a row on the top that displays words that you are most likely to use. Furthermore, you have the option of dictating your message in even more languages.

Colorful or fast

Another great addition for text input in iOS 8 is the new third-party keyboards. Browsing the AppStore, you will notice there are some free ones and some that will ask you for a few dollars.

Brightkey, for example, will only change the theme of your keyboard. It's a fun way to make the interface more vibrant, if you are into this kind of stuff. The developers have created eight themes to match the Space Grey, Silver and gold iPhone models and five extra colors to keep you busy.

Swipe has the most interesting idea. We've seen this before so you know what to expect. Basically, for $0.99 (€0.77) you can forget about typing. They think they've got the fastest and most accurate keyboard on the face of mobile phones. Try it for yourself and let us know what you think of it.

A similar, but free option is SwiftKey. You can swipe-type, but you can also use the word prediction. This keyboard has the same functionality like the stock one, but it has a better design. Unfortunately it only supports English, Portuguese, French, German, Italian and Spanish.

The useful ones

Getting into the fancy keyboards, Minuum comes with a nice twist. You can resize it vertically and switch from a prediction-type input to a full size keyboard. Minuum is $1.99 (€1.55) as part of a promotional sale, but it's going to double its price soon.

By far the best and the most useful keyboard on iOS 8 is TextExpander. It comes as a package with the 3rd version of the app and it costs $4.99 (€3.88). If you use TextExpander on your Mac or iPhone you already know how much time it can save you. However, until now, there was no way to use expansion in apps like Mail or other Apple apps. With this new keyboard you can add your snippets from the computer and be more productive.

TextExpander can be used for anything: signatures, automatically correct typos, greetings, form letters and other frequently used bits of text.

The Best iOS 8 Keyboards (5 Images)

TextExpander Keyboard
minuum keyboardSwiftKey
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