Universal Typefinity: Full-layout custom keyboard

[arobert3434]

I develop Typefinity, a custom keyboard app for iPad and iPhone designed for usability and efficiency on tablets and modern large phones.

• Number row and full punctuation on main layout
• Cursor keys
• Opt key to access additional symbols and accent keys, and activate move / delete by word mode
• Forward delete and tab keys on some layouts / devices
• Display more than three word suggestions

Also: Swipe input, short mode, selectable themes and sounds, number pad on demand, intelligent punctuation spacing, emoji search, and more. We support 22 layouts in 14 languages.

The stock keyboard was designed for the orginal 3.5" iPhone screen. If you'd like a more powerful, convenient way of typing on your modern device – not just bigger keys – consider Typefinity.

* Note, Typefinity is a paid app. We make our money by selling the keyboard, not our users' data. In fact we don't use the network at all, and you don't need to grant so-called "Full Access" to the keyboard for any functionality, except if you want to use our paste and undo buttons instead of the system's.

App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id1512009869
Privacy Policy: https://typefinity.com/privacy
Support: http://support.typefinity.com

 

[Synomenon]

I'm looking into alternate keyboards now that it seems Microsoft is not update SwiftKey. I came across Typefinity and like it so far, enough that I've paid the $4.99.

A few changes I'd like to see though:

- Enable swipe typing without having to turn on Autocorrect.
Swipe typing will not work at all unless I turn on Autocorrect.

- When pressing and holding a key, make the first secondary character to appear in the popup be the one displayed for the key / be the one that is standard for the specific key on the iOS keyboard.

- Be able to move the backspace key to where it traditionally is on the iOS keyboard.

 

[arobert3434]

I'm looking into alternate keyboards now that it seems Microsoft is not update SwiftKey. I came across Typefinity and like it so far, enough that I've paid the $4.99.

Glad you like it!

...
- Enable swipe typing without having to turn on Autocorrect.
Swipe typing will not work at all unless I turn on Autocorrect.

If you set Autocorrect to "Suggests Only", swipe will still work but suggestions during regular typing will never be auto-substituted.

- When pressing and holding a key, make the first secondary character to appear in the popup be the one displayed for the key / be the one that is standard for the specific key on the iOS keyboard.

Could you give an example of what you mean for a specific key?

- Be able to move the backspace key to where it traditionally is on the iOS keyboard.

I guess you are referring to the phone layout here. I'm not against this but have never been able to come up with a layout that preserves Typefinity's first principle – to preserve the ordinary positions of non-alpha keys as much as possible – while making that move. There's some more discussion here.


Thanks for the feedback!

 

[Synomenon]

Oh sorry, I forgot to mention this is all on an iPhone 14 Pro Max on iOS 16.0.1.

Glad you like it!



If you set Autocorrect to "Suggests Only", swipe will still work but suggestions during regular typing will never be auto-substituted.

Thanks, I'll test it out that way.

Could you give an example of what you mean for a specific key?

Sorry, I was subconsciously mixing up a bunch of different keyboards I've been testing out. The feature I was thinking of is where you swipe up on a key with a secondary character to type that character. One example is in the number row. Swiping up on 1 types !, 2 types @, 3 types #. Outside of the number row, some of the letters then the comma and period keys as well.

So it would be great if we could press and hold any of those keys and when the popup appears with the secondary character(s) / function(s), the first could be the one displayed on the key and when you let go of the press+hold, it auto types that one displayed on the key.

Example:
- Press and hold 1 -> Popup appears showing ! ` ~ ¹ ₁
Releasing the hold auto-types !


- Press and hold 3 -> Popup appears showing # £ ¥ ³ ₃l
Releasing the hold auto-types #


- Press and hold . (period) -> Popup appears showing ? .com .org .us
Releasing the hold auto-types ?

I guess you are referring to the phone layout here. I'm not against this but have never been able to come up with a layout that preserves Typefinity's first principle – to preserve the ordinary positions of non-alpha keys as much as possible – while making that move. There's some more discussion here.


Thanks for the feedback!

The default iOS keyboard with backspace above the return key. In SwiftKey, the period key is to the right of the spacebar (so in-between the spacebar and the return key)

 

[Synomenon]

Any updates?

Do you have your own subReddit for Typefinity?

 

[arobert3434]

Hi, sorry for forgetting to respond before! A number of people have asked about adding the shifted character to the key popups, so we'll give that a try in the next release. (I've been worried it adds to what can already be some cluttered popups, but we'll see.)

As far as the backspace key, that's a nice solution SwiftKey has to move a punctuation key down next to the spacebar, but in our case we already have a cursor key there and two punctuation keys that would need to move. There's just not enough room. And so far we're not convinced of the ergonomic benefit of the backspace key there – it's no longer on a corner and therefore takes more precision to hit – to do something like moving the punctuation to the top or removing it, and compromising the overall goal of similar layout to other keyboard form factors.

We have no subreddit, maybe we should create that, mostly we are old school and rely on the forum on our support site to host discussion: https://typefinity.uservoice.com/forums/292203-support-forum

 

[arobert3434]

Update: since we've had a number of requests for a less-structured forum than on our discussion site, we've now created a subreddit for that purpose. It's a bit bare right now, so please feel free to go over and post. 😄