keyboard2Android to iPhone
When I moved from Android to iPhone, I liked almost everything about it. The one thing I couldn't get used to was the keyboard.
Like a lot of people in the same spot, I went looking for alternatives. SwiftKey was the obvious first pick, and I tried Gboard too. But on iPhone, neither comes close to how much you can change on Android. I wanted a keyboard I could make my own.
And there was another catch. A keyboard sees everything you type, and both of them collect data: their App Store privacy labels list data linked to you (Gboard, SwiftKey). A 2022 study at Trinity College Dublin looked at their Android versions and found both send data about how you use them back to their servers. I wanted a keyboard that collects nothing.
Building my own
I'm a developer, so I started building one. In 2022 it was good enough to share, and I posted it on Reddit. People started using it, and that kept me going.
But I had reached the edge of what I could build on my own. It had no swipe typing, and the predictions weren't good enough. So even I, the person who made it, couldn't switch to it full time.
Finishing what I started
This year I picked it back up and finished the job, with the help of today's AI tools. Swipe typing now has its own model, trained on real swipes. The predictions read the whole sentence. Autocorrect works in 36 languages. And all of it runs on the phone: keyboard2 has no internet access at all, so nothing you type ever leaves your iPhone.
Then came everything I'd wanted from the start: themes for every key, your own photo behind the keys, your own layouts, a smart wheel on the space bar, clipboard history and emoji favorites.
Where it is now
keyboard2 is the keyboard I type on every day. I finally solved the problem for myself, and now I'm sharing it with everyone else.
People keep asking for new features, and I keep building them. That's why there's a subscription: it keeps the work going. The download is free, and the first hour has every feature, so you can see if it's for you before paying anything.
Many of the newest features started as a message from someone using it. If something's missing for you, tell me, or say hi on Reddit.
Alex, the developer of keyboard2. Made in Estonia.