Swiftkey and Swype Keyboards Coming Soon to iOS 8

After waiting for many years, Apple has finally brought support for third-party keyboards to iOS with the announcement of iOS 8.

Third-party keyboards like Swiftkey and Swype will now have system-wide keyboard access on your iPhone and iPad, just as they do on Android. However, if you are not a fan of third-party keyboards Apple has got you covered.

Apple has made major improvements to the native keyboard in iOS 8, including a new feature called QuickType. QuickType adds predictive typing suggestions that change based on your current context.

Fleksy founder Ioannis Verdelis said:

“As the first keyboard company to be active on iOS, and one of the most active even before today’s announcements, we can’t hide our excitement for today’s news that Apple will allow third party keyboards to be used systemwide on iOS 8. We will, of course, be part of this.” 

In a statement, Swiftkey founders Jon Reynolds and Ben Medlock said:

“We’re delighted Apple has decided to embrace the importance of opening its platform to third party keyboards. Are we going to build SwiftKey Keyboard for iOS 8? Of course we are. We’ve already started.”

I’m sure that many more developers have already started working on third-party keyboards for the latest version of iOS. Will you be taking advantage of a third-party keyboard when iOS 8 launches this fall? Let us know in the comments below.

[via The Verge]