[Fleksy]I'm writing this from my one plus one in an under appreciate markdown editor called ia writer. Couple of days back SwiftKey announced a new experimental software hub called "Greenwave". Along with came a new experimental keyboard called Clarity. On the same day I discovered Fleksy had updated their app with extensions. I've been playing with both keyboards alternatively and this is their story.
Both of them are kind of opposite. Clarity is as simple as a keyboard can be on the surface. There are no special options, prediction bar or gesture typing. Claritys simplicity is to a fault. You have very little control over the typing process. Its very hard to go back and correct a mistake. Fleksy on the other hand is immensely opinionated when it comes to typing on android. It's filled with gestures I can't remember and now extensions.
[Clarity] The problem with Fleksy is that its core writing part sucks. The keyboard has no key separations . I can never hit the right keys. It feels like the app wants me to make mistakes so it can then come out and boast about how it made it all better . But my brain doesn't work that way. Even when I'm typing really fast. I see the catastrophic doellibg mistakes and fleksys failed attempts at making it better . And the gestures, I can't remember them. Give me buttons please.
So it's kind of sad that fleksy the one doing extensions. On the top bar you can have three scrollable sections. You can add hotkeys to frequent phrases or emojis. Get better clipboard manager and even app launcher.
I love the fact that SwiftKey now has a whole new program for experimental stuff and that fleksy is trying extensions . The problem is that both keyboards are inheritedly flawed.
[SwiftKey] I think SwiftKey can be our only savior. It's one of the few apps that's gotten typing on Android right for years. The prediction engine in this thing is really good. So is the keys layout.
I've tried a lot of third party keyboards on iOS 8 and none of them are as good or stable as the default one. But what I liked about them were the ambitious feature set. There's a textexpander keyboard that expands snippets of text. The one password keyboard helps you login in to sites, and of course there's a gif keyboard.
What I would like to see is extensions in SwiftKey for Android. They're already selling themes for dollar each, they can do that for extensions as well. Thousands if not millions like me would be happy to pay couple of dollars for the ease of use.
Wouldn't it be great if you could expand textsnippets, get supreme clipboard management, gifs, shortcuts and more from just one keyboard. And that keyboard is something you can actually use daily pulling your hair out.
Fleksy trying out extensions is great for competition. I hope SwiftKey will take notice and start adding such pro features in their own app. As for clarity, it's still very far from being your only keyboard. But I hope parts of it make it to SwiftKey someday.