swiftkey note for iOSOne of the things I love most about the Android platform is the ability to use third-party keyboards, like SwiftKey, which has an uncanny predictive ability. Unfortunately, iOS doesn’t allow third-party keyboards. The stock keyboard is okay, but it doesn’t have crazy good prediction.

The folks at SwiftKey have coded a work around called SwiftKey Note for iOS. It’s a separate app, so you can’t use it systemwide, but if you can live with the limitations of only using it in the dedicated app, it has utility.

The app syncs seamlessly with Evernote, so if you use it, SwiftKey Note might meet many of your needs.

I’m using it to write this post, and it’s predictions are uncanny. For common words, I often don’t have to type more than a few characters, and sometimes I don’t have to type any. For example, in that last sentence, it predicted five words in a row.

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Check out the screen shot to get a feel for how it works. Two characters in, it knew “Check” was one of the likely words I wanted. How does it know? You let the app analyze some common apps, (like Evernote), and it uses that information to guess your next word. I’ve had it predict entire short sentences. I guess that means I’m predictable in my writing. 🙂

Using SwiftKey Note is not as fast as using an external keyboard, and you do have to get used to looking both at the keys and the prediction bar, but it’s a short learning curve. I use it for writing blog posts and for taking notes in meetings, both of which are places where I would ordinarily use Evernote. I haven’t yet tried it for longer documents, but I recently found a post on using Evernote as a novel writing tool, and I might try using the combination of SwiftKey Note and Evernote to work on my current book.

It’s free, so there’s not much down side to giving it a try and seeing if it works for you.

iTunes link

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