UPDATE, August 2, 2023: Microsoft changed its mind, and has continued to support SwiftKey with both bug fixes and new features. The reversal happened before the app would have been delisted.
I have had some kind of iOS device going back to the iPhone 4 in 2010. How has it already been 12 years? Time is crazy.
The default keyboard the iPhone uses has never felt right to me, and so early on I looked for alternatives when Apple allowed for third-party keyboards. I found one in SwiftKey, which looked nice, was usually good with autocorrect, rather than aggressively awful (why is it I had not seen the term “auto-corrupt” before today?) and didn’t require you to swap to a different keyboard screen for something as simple as using a question mark.
Microsoft bought SwiftKey in 2016, but this didn’t seem to affect the app itself, so I continued on my merry way with it.
Today Microsoft announced it was ending support for the iOS version of SwiftKey on October 5, 2022, and it would be delisted, meaning it will work on current devices, but when you get your shiny new iPhone 18 Pro Max Ultra, SwiftKey will be nowhere to be found, purged completely from iOS.
Microsoft didn’t say why they are killing off only the iOS version, but it probably has to do with data collection and the limits Apple has in place for third-party keyboards.
I am sad.
For now, I’ll keep using it, as I don’t expect to get a new iPhone or iPad any time soon and the app will work fine in the meantime. After that, if I do get a new Apple iSomething, I’ll have to consider other options:
- Default keyboard. It’s better now, but it still has a weird floaty feel I don’t like, and the keys seem a bit too small, even for my tiny, doll-like hands.
- Gboard. Decent, but I’m trying to get away from Google, not run into its data-harvesting arms.
- Grammarly. I guess they make a keyboard? Does it prompt you to get the Grammarly app if you make too many typos?
- Others? Microsoft also owns Nuance, which itself owned Swype, so…who knows?
Meh. Meh, I say! This also reminds me that the utterly addictive iOS game Dungeon Raid got abandoned years ago. I played the heck out of that thing, then it stopped getting updated and is now gone forever (it was a paid app, not “freemium”). Given how much I played, I probably shouldn’t lament its disappearance.
