Gboard – the Google Keyboard 12+

Ok so it’s so close to being perfect but three things keep it from being perfect.

1. The app. The app is pretty good apart from the fact it doesn't go from vertical to horizontal. This creates an issue when using the keyboard themes. You can't turn it in its side so it doesn't show you what it looks like when the screen is horizontal. This means when using an image as the theme it's near impossible for you to work out if it will look the way you want it to.

2. Swapping keyboards. This is more of a nitpick but it's stupid how you can't instantly swap to say, Japanese keyboard, then back to Gboard. You instead have to go 'next keyboard' and then select the right keyboard if it's wrong.

3. This is the worst one by far though. The keyboard can't keep up with my fingers as well as the iOS keyboard can meaning when typing long things it often will skip a word space, full stop or letter. This is particularly bad in Google Docs. This makes Gboard UNUSABLE in Google Docs. This occasionally happens in other apps as well.

Other then that I love the GIFs, instant access to Google and the slide typing. Thank you

Overall I would recommend getting this app. After my current use of the app for about a month, there have been no times were I have wished I had the standard IOS Keyboard. There are no issues with the app itself or the Keyboard that stand out to me.

Being able the change the background image was the big draw in for me after seeing a friend use the app. The gifs, faces and drawings are commonly used by me and the slide typing is an effective way of speeding up my typing while using only one hand however I find it faster to type normally when able to use two hands. While typing in horizontal mode, the extra buttons made available like the move right and left buttons are a help as well.

In the end it's a good app and would recommend it to anyone. It dose what the standard keyboard dose plus a little bit extra here and there. Good job Google.

Started using gboard after swiftkey was crashing endlessly. So far after a couple weeks I've been very underwhelmed, especially for how much praise I hear about it.

My main issue is the autocorrect feature does absolutely nothing most of the time and pretty much always requires just manually rewriting words (whether it's typing normally and waiting for it to correct on hitting space/enter, or tapping the top bar word suggestions), and has even on very rare occasions changed words to completely different ones that weren't remotely close to anything even suggested.

This issue may be me being used to SwiftKey, but it's very clunky to use. The keyboard feels cramped in practice, and I often find myself somehow tapping the globe or emoji button when I'm typing around the middle of the keyboard. At times (like literally just now multiple times throughout typing this reviewp) it can even get stuck for a few tries where pressing anything would flick it to emotes

And a final nitpick for good measure: The period button is now an at symbol, which I've just naturally started avoiding and ended up using the symbols section to do full stops instead.

Overall I really would not recommend this to anyone unless they severely dislike the default keyboard and want things like themes and easily switchable languages. Far more hassle than it's worth.