Already available for a while on Android devices, the Swiftkey keyboard software has finally made its way to the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. It is not available system-wide of course, since Apple does not yet allow for custom keyboards, but thanks to Swiftkey Note, we now can experience all the advantages of this innovative software keyboard in a simple and useful free app for iOS devices.
Here’s a look at the app and its features, including its unique, smart, keyboard.
The Swiftkey Keyboard
While at first glance the Swiftkey keyboard might seem like just another keyboard with a custom toolbar at the top, in reality it is a blend of cool artificial intelligence with advanced text prediction software.
The keyboard is present throughout the Swiftkey Note app and its job is to make typing words faster.
To achieve this, the app makes use of some neat tricks behind the scenes. As you type, the toolbar above the keyboard starts showing different words. These range from simple corrections to complex suggestions, which Swiftkey Note improves at providing you with as the app learns from your usage.
In addition to that, you can choose up to three different language profiles for typing, allowing you to type in any of them indistinctly.
Thanks to this, and to its continuous learning process, Swiftkey Note becomes better with time at predicting what you are going to write to the point that I was able to type a few words without even needing to tap the Space key.
No Swiftkey Cloud
A really neat feature that the iOS version of Swiftkey lacks though, is Swiftkey Cloud, which is available for Android users. This lets you allow Swiftkey to tap into your Gmail, Twitter and Facebook accounts to learn from the way you write on them and considerably improve its suggestions in a very short amount of time.
To compensate for this, Swiftkey Note lets you sync with your Evernote account in order to fetch your notes if you want, but mostly to improve its prediction algorithms.
A Decent Notes App
With all the fuss about its keyboard, we can’t forget that this is a notes app after all, and in this respect Swiftkey Note also proves very capable, although not revolutionary or advanced in any way.
The notes you take in the app can be tagged and/or grouped into Notebooks, which serve pretty much as folders. Additionally, you can also export them via email, Airdrop or just as simple text files (if you don’t sync with Evernote, that is).
Final Thoughts
Overall, the Swiftkey Note app proved a nice surprise and hopefully marks the first of many apps that use this keyboard. Or even better, perhaps we could see this as an optional iOS keyboard in the future. The notes app is very capable, but it is the fast typing what really sets it apart. So if you are a note-taker looking for something that can help you save time, you’ll be delighted with Swiftkey Note. And since it is free and universal, there really is no reason for you not to give it a shot.
TechGrade 