Apps

I’m of the philosophy that if you are going to add a third-party keyboard to your iPhone, there is no reason to waste time with boring designs. The brighter, the better. My fascination with third-party keyboards starts with how different they look than Apple’s standard one.

Brightkey for iOS 8 is just about as different as they come. It features eight different skins, including five candy-colored keyboards. I just want to eat my iPhone it’s so cute. Plus, this keyboard has one standout feature that you'll love.

I’ve gone through a handful of the most popular third-party keyboards for iOS 8 and each one has a little special something that makes it stand out from the rest. We’re not talking about simple color changes (although I do like those), but real functions that push them beyond the norm.

TouchPal Keyboard is another such app that promises unique functionality and delivers the goods. Whether you prefer tapping or swiping, this is a well-rounded keyboard with plenty of useful features.

Why type when you can swipe, indeed. I know that swiping instead of tapping is merely a fun feature and not necessarily a productive way to type. Nevertheless, I love to swipe. The iPhone has this extraordinary touch screen device that uses amazing gesture-based technology. Why not use it to its full potential?

Swype uses gesture-based actions to the fullest. You can tell that this company has been around for a while. The dev team has perfected the swipe-to-type technology.

When Apple first announced that it would allow users to set third-party apps as the default keyboard, I got pretty excited. I know it doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, but similar to having a multitude of pens in varying styles and colors, I like having options when typing. It makes it more fun.

MyScript Stack is another third-party app that is now compatible as a default keyboard for iOS 8. Although, I’d be incorrectly describing it as a keyboard since its main feature is that you can handwrite letters instead of typing them.

I’m having a lot of fun testing out different keyboards for iOS 8. Each one has a different feature that makes it special. Now all I have to do is figure out which one I’m most likely to make my go-to keyboard.

KuaiBoard is another third-party app that you can add to the list of default keyboards for iOS 8. This one is actually not a keyboard at all, but a template fill-in that you can use for quickly sending text that you repeat often with just one tap.

On the iPhone 6 Plus, screen real estate is not as much of an issue as it is for the 5s and smaller. For those of you lucky enough to get your hands on the biggest iPhone ever, you might turn your nose up at anything that truncates an app’s features in order to save screen space. But, the rest of us need every inch we can get.

Minuum is a keboard app that can be set as the default thanks to iOS 8. It features an intelligent auto-correct that learns your typing habits, predictive typing for getting to the next word faster, and a keyboard that can be minimized into a single line on the screen.

My brother is an Android user and I am an iOS 8 user. So of course he is always showing me things that he can customize on his smartphone that I can’t. One time, he showed me how he could swipe his finger across his keyboard to type words. “Big deal,” I said. “Jealous,” I thought.

Now that SwiftKey Keyboard is available as a default keyboard for iOS 8, I was quick to download it to see just how cool the feature really is. SwiftKey is mainly a predictive keyboard that learns your writing style and gives you suggestions for what you might want to say next. But, it also has that cool “Flow” swiping feature so you can type without tapping.

One of the cool new features available in iOS 8 is the ability to set third-party keyboard apps as the default on your iPhone and iPad. I was quick to jump on that bandwagon. Fleksy Keyboard – Happy Typing was my first third-party default because, frankly, I wanted my keyboard to look like a candy store. It is a gesture-based, colorful, super fast keyboard for iOS 8 with autocorrect and word suggestions. I’ve been playing with it for about a day now and I’ve got some hands-on experience to pass along to you.