Give Your Phone a Huge (and Free) Upgrade by Switching to Another Keyboard

When you have multiple keyboards installed, you can manage them on iOS by opening Settings, then choosing General > Keyboard > Keyboards. To swap between keyboards you’ve installed, tap and hold the globe icon that appears in the lower left corner of all your keyboards.

On Android, you can find your keyboards via System > Keyboard > On-screen keyboard from Settings. To switch between them, tap and hold on the globe icon that appears in the lower right corner whenever a keyboard is on the screen.

The Best Phone Keyboards to Try

Gboard (Android, iOS) is a good option to start with here. It’s preinstalled by default on Pixel phones, but it’s also an excellent keyboard pick for iPhones and Android phones not made by Google. It’s fast and clean, works really well for GIFs, emoji, and stickers, and supports glide typing (where you swipe over letters to form words rather than tapping on each individual letter).

Then there’s SwiftKey (Android, iOS), which is developed by Microsoft. As you might expect, there’s Copilot AI integration built right in, so if you’re stuck for something to say, you can use generative AI to do your writing for you. SwiftKey will also learn your writing style as you go, meaning autocorrections and suggestions get more accurate over time.

SwiftKey comes with a range of settings to play around with.

Photograph: David Nield

Typewise (Android, iOS) demonstrates how third-party keyboards can be a little out of the ordinary. It offers an unusual layout that makes use of hexagonal letter and character tiles, and which Typewise says can seriously speed up your typing speed. There’s also support for multiple languages, AI integrations, and custom gestures.

You may be familiar with Grammarly from the web and the desktop (and from the recent news about its missteps), but the grammar and spell checker service is also available as a keyboard on iOS and as a keyboard extension on Android. As well as checking on your writing, Grammarly puts AI front and center: You can get writing suggestions from a prompt, for example, or change the tone of an existing message with a couple of taps.

If you’re interested in customization options above everything else, then consider Mister Keyboard for iOS. It’s stacked with ways to tweak the look and layout of your iPhone’s keyboard, and to access features like emoji and the clipboard. Either pick one of the preset themes, or take pixel-by-pixel control over the keyboard.

Mister Keyboard isn’t available for Android, but there is theming support in Futo Keyboard for Android. It also includes smart autocorrect and text editing tools, and prides itself on its privacy. The keyboard app doesn’t ask for permission to connect to the internet, so you know that your keystrokes aren’t being sent anywhere.