Available from today on iPhone, Gboard gives you ready access to GIFs, emojis, and “Glide Typing” (it’s a Swipe keyboard) — plus it has Google Search built right in.
Here is everything you need to know.
One of the basic aims of GBoard is to eliminate the need to switch apps. “Say you’re in a messaging app, chatting about dinner plans with a friend,” says Google. “You leave your messaging app, switch to another app to search for a restaurant, then copy-paste the information back into your conversation.”
The idea is to search and send information right from your keyboard, without having to switch apps back and forth. You can search anything from restaurants, to a flight number, images, videos — basically, anything you can search on Google, you can search on the new keyboard.
You can search and share contacts without opening the contacts app by switching on “contacts search” in the Gboard settings, and you can move your cursor easily by sliding your finger on the search bar.
Available in English US, English UK, English AU, English CA, and English IN, Google is planning to add “lots more” languages in future versions.
Glide Typing is a feature of Gboard that might look familiar to Android users — it’s essentially Swipe. You slide your finger from letter to letter to type (it’s supposed to be easier than typing but if you’re anything like me you might not like it). The iOS version also gets smarter as you use it and learns how you type.
When you have third-party keyboards on iOS, you sometimes get switched back to the iOS default keyboard, and Gboard has not been immune to this. Google has alerted this is an issue with the app, which is being worked on “hard to get this resolved”.
If it happens to you, Google says to “just tap on the globe icon next to the space bar to switch to it”.
Gboard is launching on the app store today at 10am, but we’ve been hearing it’s a little tricky to find. Let us know if you have success!