GoKawiilYou see a lot of your phone's keyboard. It pops up whenever you need to enter text or numbers, it's your gateway to galleries of GIFs and emoji, and it’s a shortcut for voice dictation. It's an essential part of using a smartphone.
While it might seem like the Android or iOS keyboard is a baked-in part of your mobile experience, it's actually something you can change. No matter what your make and model of phone, you can switch to a variety of third-party keyboards, with different layouts, themes, and features.
Considering how much time you spend tap typing, upgrading the keyboard can make a real difference to how you use your phone. Here's how to switch—and some of the best options worth trying out from the Apple and Google app stores.
How to Switch Your Phone's Keyboard
Third-party keyboards can be installed just like regular apps. Open up the Play Store on Android or the App Store on iOS, search for keyboards, and you'll find a bunch available. Most are free to use or at least try, and some come with premium features you can pay for if you think you'll find them useful.
Once you've installed a third-party keyboard, it may immediately ask to make itself the default keyboard for your phone (the one that pops up whenever there's typing to be done). You don't have to do this right away, and you can switch between installed keyboards whenever you want.
You can switch between iPhone keyboards as needed. Photograph: David Nield
You might also need to tap through and confirm some security permissions when you first install a keyboard. This is a reminder to only install keyboards from well-known developers you can trust—for clues, look at the developer history and online presence, how long the keyboard has been around, and how positive its reviews are.
These apps can see everything you type, so you're trusting that this data isn't collected—just like you're trusting Google and Apple when it comes to their built-in keyboards. The audits carried out on the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store should give you some level of protection against bad actors, but it still pays to be cautious. You should also check out the developer's privacy policies on the keyboard app listing.