Microsoft Garage released its Hub Keyboard app on the iOS yesterday. Prior to this, Microsoft’s experimental app-making arm made an Android release back in February. Hub Keyboard has a neat minimal design along with some powerful attachment and search buttons.
Microsoft brings Hub Keyboard App for iOS
Garage apps failed at gaining much traction, and it seems that at this point, Microsoft is releasing a new one out into the wild every few weeks. Hub Keyboard – a Garage app – comes with a sleek design and some useful features, but it is of use only to those willing to link an Office 365 account.
Most likely, Hub Keyboard is the work focused keyboard, something very much required in the iOS right now at least until Google’s own in-progress iPhone keyboard becomes capable of competing with it. Microsoft now has the ownership of SwiftKey, therefore, it cannot be said to be short on software keyboard talent to keep iterating on typing apps for many months to come.
Microsoft Garage team came up with the hub Keyboard app back in 2015, with hope to relieve the users from the inconvenience of switching between the apps to complete common tasks. The app is available for free in the App Store, but the users will be required to toggle the iPhone’s settings, so as to be able to use more useful functions of the Hub keyboard.
What does the iOS version lack?
Using the Hub Keyboard app, users will be able to dig through their OneDrive files and drop instant links in the chat messages. Also, they will be able to copy and paste contact info for which they will need to link their address book. Microsoft touts that its Hub Keyboard is a clever way for users to multitask from within a single app. There is also a built-in search feature that allows the users to scan for Office documents and share them with other people, or just see a list recently viewed files.
Thought here are several uses of the keyboard for the iOS users, but there are few shortcomings as well compared to the Android version. Owing to the platform restrictions, the iOS version of the Hub Keyboard does not support all the features supported on the Android version.
For example, the iOS version of the app shows just the text copied recently, and does not show a list of all copied items. Additionally, it also seems that the translation feature available on the Android version is missing on the iOS version.
