Did you know that it isn’t just with Android Wear and Smartwatches where Android and Apple play nicely? Google has recently revealed a new keyboard app for the iPhone called Gboard, this brand new and extremely stylish new app lets you search Google directly from the keyboard without ever having to leave the app!
How Does Gboard Work?
For example, let’s say you’re in the middle of sending a message to a friend and they want to know where to meet up with you. You can search for the address using the Gboard keyboard and embed the address information directly into the message.
In a recent interview the principal engineer at Google Rajan Patel he said:
Gboard allows you to search for all kinds of things – restaurant infor, Cinema showings, Flight times straight from within your keyboard
Literally anything that you can search for within a regular browser can be done on Gboard, with results appearing as card in the conversation. I will even include detailed info like phone numbers and business opening hours.
Features and Support
Wait! There’s some more good news, Gboard also supports emoji, and has a Gif-searching function making it even more appealing to the younger selfie generation. In addition, there is support for swipe-typing, this is a feature on alternative keyboard app, and in fact Blackberry introduced something similar with BB10 a few years ago. The app also works in any app messaging scenario, so email, YouTube and more of the common apps you use every day.
How to Find and Download Gboard
As it currently stands this keyboard app was created by Google for the iPhone and iPad. However, it has been revealed today that Google is working as quickly as it can, to get as many languages and country support version of Gboard ready. With a UK version expected very soon!
To get the app you will have to either, head over to the App Store on your iPhone or iPad and search for Gboard. The actual full description of the app is “Gboard — Search. GIFs. Emojis & more. Right from your keyboard”.
Once you’ve found it, make sure that you’re running a compatible version of iOS,it currently requires that you are running on iOS 9.0 and later plus have at least 33.5MB of available storage. There’s also what could be a rather troublesome statement that states a user must be at least 17 years of age to download and use the app.
Final Thoughts
Personally I didn’t have high hopes for Gboard when I first installed it however; having used it for a couple of days I now prefer it to the standard iOS keyboard. I like how it combines lots of features that are usually separated into one package that works well and seems to have no bugs!