Android has had custom keyboards for a really long time now, and for good reason; stock keyboards weren’t often the best experience. SwiftKey is without doubt one of the more popular keyboard replacements, and it has reached a new milestone this week with SwiftKey 6.0 being released to the public. After a couple of weeks in public beta, the final release is now available.
The new features in version 6.0 include:
- Double-Word Prediction adds a new dimension to the predictions you see, predicting your next two words at once and helping you type faster than ever
- A redesign of the emoji panel, making it more accessible and speedy
- A complete overhaul of the settings menu in the style of Material Design to make it easier to fine tune and customize your keyboard
- 5 new languages: Yoruba, Igbo, Zulu, Xhosa & Breton
An unexpected bonus in the new version was the inclusion of new themes, and not just a couple, but a full 34 of them. The new default theme is striking – Carbon Light – which you can see in the header image above. The full range of themes can be viewed from within the SwiftKey app, though SwiftKey have also published some information about them on their blog.
Other bug fixes and improvements include:
- Prediction fixes when tagging/checking into Facebook
- Randomly capitalized words won’t be added to your language model
- Greater consistency with swipe-to-delete on Samsung devices
- No more jumpy cursor or text duplication issues in Chrome or apps using web views
The update is available today from the Play Store; it’s already reached my phone this morning (nice and early) so it should be available for everyone fairly quickly if you haven’t got it already.
If you like SwiftKey, do yourself a favour and look up “Super SwiftKey” on XDA