Developer(s) Google Operating system | Development status Active | |
Initial release May 12, 2016 (iOS)
December 12, 2016 (Android) Android 6.0.79 / January 10, 2017; 57 days ago (2017-01-10) iOS 1.3.0 / February 23, 2017; 13 days ago (2017-02-23) | ||
Gboard is a keyboard app developed by Google for Android and iOS devices. It was first released on iOS in May 2016, followed by a release on Android in December 2016, debuting as a major update for the already-established Google Keyboard on the Android platform.
Contents
Features
Gboard is a keyboard featuring Google Search, including web results and predictive answers, easy searching and sharing of GIF and emoji content, a predictive typing engine suggesting the next word depending on context, and multilingual language support. Gboard supported "more than 100 languages" at the time of its launch on the Android platform, and Google states that Gboard will add more languages "over the coming months".
An update for the iOS app released in August 2016 added French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish languages, as well as offering "smart GIF suggestions", where the keyboard will suggest GIFs relevant to text written. The keyboard also offers new options for a dark theme or adding a personal image from the camera roll as the keyboard's background. Another new update in February 2017 added Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Polish, Romanian, Swedish, Catalan, Hungarian, Malay, Russian, Latin American Spanish, and Turkish languages, along with support for voice dictation, enabling users to "long press the mic button on the space bar and talk".
Reception
Nathan Olivarez-Giles of The Wall Street Journal praised the keyboard, particularly the integrated Google search feature. However, he noted that the app does not currently support integration with other apps on the device, meaning that queries such as "Buy Captain America movie tickets" sent him to the web browser rather than an app for movie tickets installed on his phone. Olivarez-Giles also praised the predictive typing engine, stating that it "blows past most competitors" and "it gets smarter with use". He also discovered that Gboard "cleverly suggests emojis as you type words". He did note the lack of a one-handed mode, as well as lack of options for changing color or size of keys, writing that "If you’re looking to customize a keyboard, Gboard isn’t for you."