SwiftKey announced on Wednesday that it will be bringing its popular Prediction Engine technology to the iOS 8 version of its keyboard replacement, available September 17 in the iTunes App Store, the same day as iOS 8's release. SwiftKey also said the iOS version would include cloud syncing and support for multilingual text entry.
SwiftKey is a four year-old popular keyboard replacement utility on Android devices, using its own auto-correct feature and some excellent prediction to make text entry easier on touchscreen devices. With the advent of iOS 8 and the option for additional keyboards, SwiftKey is now making this same utility available to Apple users.
SwiftKey Video, narrated by Stephen Fry.
Part of what makes SwiftKey so useful is that it learns the words and phrases you type most, and is able to predict more accurately the more you use it. One of the interesting things about typing with SwiftKey is that you don't necessarily need to tap each letter on the screen, it includes SwiftKey Flow, where you slide your finger from letter to letter. Add that to the learning/prediction engine and it gets a lot easier to create and send a quick note to someone.
A close-up shot of SwiftKey's new keyboard for iOS 8.
If you're worried about using SwiftKey on one of your devices and having to teach it all over again someplace else, this is resolved by SwiftKey Cloud, which backs up and syncs your data across devices, so if I type "amazerbeams" a bunch of times on my iPhone, it will show up in the SwiftKey app on my iPad as well.
Multilingual users will also cheer the option to type in two languages at once without having to switch between keyboards. Currently the languages supported are English, Portuguese, French, Italian, German, and Spanish.