SwiftKey for iPhone Gets Emoji Prediction, New Themes, and More

SwiftKey for iPhone Gets Emoji Prediction, New Themes, and More

Microsoft’s SwiftKey keyboard for iPhone has received a significant update that adds emoji prediction, new themes, new languages, and more.

As you may recall, Microsoft purchased the popular SwiftKey and its popular Android and iOS software keyboards in early 2016 Since then, the software giant has worked to continually update this solution, most notably in December 2016, when it made SwiftKey themes—previously in-app purchases—available for free.

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With this week’s update, SwiftKey for iOS—which works on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch–is being updated with a nice slate of new features. Among them are:

Emoji prediction. A new emoji prediction panel is available when you tap the emoji key, providing a selection of 18 emoji that match the sentence you type. This should make it faster to making it faster to find what you’re looking for.

New themes. SwiftKey is picking up 8 new “Oxygen” themes in various bright colors including Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Light Blue, Blue, Purple and Pink. Like other themes, they’re all free.

More responsive trigger cursor control. Thanks to feedback, SwiftKey’s trigger cursor control—basically, swipe-based cursor movement—is now more responsive.

Haptic feedback. iPhone 7 and 7 Plus users will now experience haptic feedback on certain keyboard actions, including opening the emoji panel.

More languages. SwiftKey’s already-impressive language support is swelling with 15 new languages in this update, bringing the total to over 115. Newly-supported languages include Akan (Twi), Egyptian Arabic, Bambara, Dagbani, Jola-Fonyi, Ewe, Gujlish, Greenlandic, Lingala, Latgalian, Mossi, Northern Sami, Shona, Tanglish, and Wolof.

Not using SwiftKey yet? You can download it from the Apple Apps Store. (There’s no mention of the Android version being updated, but I assume that will happen soon as well.)

 

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Conversation 19 comments

  • SPARTANGUY83

    20 July, 2017 - 9:53 am

    <p>Android version just updated.</p>

  • rameshthanikodi

    20 July, 2017 - 12:41 pm

    <p>shit, those new themes look great!</p><p>also, it's sad Microsoft is delivering this here in 2017. We had emoji prediction on Windows Phone 8.1's WordFlow.</p>

    • webguynj

      20 July, 2017 - 5:18 pm

      <blockquote>Emoji prediction is in Microsoft's wordflow keyboard for iPhone <a href="#150736"><em>In reply to FalseAgent:</em></a></blockquote><p><br></p>

  • AnOldAmigaUser

    Premium Member
    20 July, 2017 - 12:51 pm

    <p>Emoji prediction…</p><p>Society is just going to hell in a handbasket.</p><p><br></p><p>I believe your term is "the dumbening"?</p>

    • MutualCore

      21 July, 2017 - 1:52 am

      <blockquote><a href="#150742"><em>In reply to AnOldAmigaUser:</em></a></blockquote><p>SwiftKey is a separate company under Microsoft. Their job is to make SwiftKey better and better, which includes things like prediction. Why so derisive?</p>

      • AnOldAmigaUser

        Premium Member
        21 July, 2017 - 12:09 pm

        <blockquote><a href="#151212"><em>In reply to MutualCore:</em></a></blockquote><blockquote><em>The issue is not "predictive", it is emojis. We are reducing communication from the written word to smiley-faces, and piles of steaming excrement.</em></blockquote><blockquote><em>If you are good with that, great. As for me, if I ever use an emoji, I should be struck dead on the spot.</em></blockquote><p><br></p>

        • MutualCore

          22 July, 2017 - 12:53 am

          <blockquote><a href="#151399"><em>In reply to AnOldAmigaUser:</em></a></blockquote><p>You're missing the point. It's about prediction algorithms, not whether the image is a steaming pile of excrement or something else. It's computer science and innovative.</p>

          • AnOldAmigaUser

            Premium Member
            27 July, 2017 - 12:25 pm

            <blockquote><a href="#151576"><em>In reply to MutualCore:</em></a></blockquote><p>You are missing the point. I am discussing societal issues, and you are discussing technical issues. I could also argue that predicting an emoji, based on past usage, is no more difficult than predicting text (which, I agree, is innovative and cool.)</p><p><br></p><p>Emojis make our communication dumber. Having the device predict the emoji one needs, removing even that sliver of a thought, makes the user, incrementally, that much dumber.</p>

    • chrisrut

      Premium Member
      21 July, 2017 - 11:07 am

      <blockquote><a href="#150742"><em>In reply to AnOldAmigaUser:</em></a></blockquote><p>The machines don't have to steal our thunder – we're giving it away. Abdicating the throne at the pinnacle of evolution :-)</p>

  • rgelb

    20 July, 2017 - 2:16 pm

    <p>It needs to have dictation. If Apple makes it difficult, do it like GBoard did it – by integrating with a 3rd party app that does dictation. </p>

    • jbuccola

      21 July, 2017 - 6:09 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#150798"><em>In reply to rgelb:</em></a></blockquote><blockquote><br></blockquote><p><em>THIS x1000</em></p><p><br></p><p>Dictation is at least 1/3rd of my keyboard input.</p>

  • Minok

    20 July, 2017 - 3:14 pm

    <p>Emoji prediction? Dear lord.. the most common problem I've got is that text I'm typing is incorrectly converted to emoji's by various messaging applications, such as funnily enough Lync/Skype/Whatever its now called this week.</p><p>When you're a tech worker, using parenthesis in a message is rather common, as well as slashes, colons, semi-colons and the like… and seeing a perfectly good sentence mangled to odd smilyfaces and coffee mugs frustrates on a weekly basis.</p><p><br></p><p>SO now the swift keyboard will predict the wrong thing it wants to do? Nice.</p>

  • harmjr

    Premium Member
    20 July, 2017 - 3:35 pm

    <p>Microsoft owns this app and from what I hear people like it. I have never used it myself on android or ios. </p><p>However why are stuck with the same black and grey touch keyboard in Windows 10. At least they are adding dictation to it but come one you want to know why your losing Tablets well maybe its your desire to be on all platforms except your own.</p>

  • webguynj

    20 July, 2017 - 4:19 pm

    <p>Why do they even have swiftkey when they have wordflow. Wordflow already has emoji prediction. However, more important questions – Why can google GBoard provide voice to text input and neither swiftkey or Wordflow do? And Gee why can't they get either to integrate with Cortana Search? And why can't outlook for iOS integrate any better at with Skype for Business as an add-in when they support add-ins. and the list goes on and on</p>

  • Darekmeridian

    20 July, 2017 - 7:27 pm

    <p>Also not mentioned above is there are tiny bits of the Fluent Design bits thrown in on the Design page.</p><p>Microsoft is so weird.</p><p><br></p><p>https://1drv.ms/i/s!AioT_zhNvJcLhtoMqG2DCAOWp5BTfA</p&gt;

  • Spineless

    20 July, 2017 - 9:46 pm

    <p>I wish WordFlow on iOS wasn't dead. I have so many more oddball auto corrects with SwiftKey. As in "how the F*ck did you come up with that word?", and "I was no where near the letter s"…</p><p><br></p><p>Swipe style text entry with SwiftKey is pretty crappy compared to WordFlow.</p>

    • Tommy

      21 July, 2017 - 10:54 am

      <blockquote><a href="#151121"><em>In reply to Spineless:</em></a></blockquote><p>Uggghhh I didn't know WordFlow was dead/dying. I use it whenever possible on my iPhone. Microsoft, please stop killing products that I come to depend on.</p>

  • Rob_Wade

    21 July, 2017 - 9:25 am

    <p>Merciful heaven, I hate emoji. And I despise any service that tries to convert what I'm typing INTO an emoji. I would like to prevent that from ever happening on any system I use.</p>

  • engellion

    21 July, 2017 - 11:40 am

    <p>How about this. My wife hates the SwiftKey keyboard on her Oppo A57. Much prefers her Lumia 630.</p><p><br></p><p>Swiftkey text prediction is just soooo aggressive. Even when she types out correctly a phrase, with correct spelling. SwiftKey changes it to something ridiculous. </p><p><br></p><p>E.g. </p><p>Wife types: "Will I pick you up at 6 to take you out to the wharf"</p><p>Swiftkey: "Will I know you up at 6 to take you out to the wharf."</p><p><br></p><p>They need to tone it down. </p>

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