Indic Keyboard v4.0

Indic Keyboard has crossed 6 million downloads! When I announced v3.0, we were approaching 3 million. Thank you to everyone who uses it, recommends it, reports bugs, and contributes to the project.

I’m happy to announce Indic Keyboard v4.0, with more languages, new ways to type, and improvements across the app. I’ll write a detailed blog post later. For now, here’s what’s new.

More languages and layouts

This release adds 8 languages: Bhojpuri, Ho, Konkani, Rohingya, Saurashtra, Sindhi, Sylheti, and Tulu.

It also adds support for 7 scripts: Hanifi Rohingya, Kaithi, Meetei Mayek, Saurashtra, Sharada, Syloti Nagri, and Warang Citi, along with new layouts for several existing languages.

New ways to type

We built our own gesture typing algorithm, so you can slide your finger across the keyboard to type. It isn’t perfect yet, and we’ll keep improving it.

Gesture typing also works with transliteration layouts—possibly a first for a keyboard. You can swipe the Latin spelling of a word and get suggestions in your language.

Companion typing brings suggestions in a second language while you type English, without switching keyboards.

Predictive transliteration, powered by Varnam, is available for 13 languages. With traditional transliteration, people were often unsure whether to use a lowercase or uppercase letter, or which combination would produce a particular character. Predictive transliteration takes away that guesswork: type the word as it sounds and choose from the suggestions.

Transliteration editing has also improved: backspace lets you edit a word key by key, and you can choose to see the Latin text you typed.

Language packs

Dictionaries are now downloaded as language packs, so you only need to download the ones you use. There’s also next-word prediction for 20 languages and updated dictionaries using words from Wikipedia, Olam, and Alar.

Downloading language packs required us to add internet permission. the permission is not used after that.

If you prefer, there’s an offline build with all language packs included and no internet permission as direct download.

Other improvements

There are plenty of new features and smaller changes:

• Clipboard history with image support and configurable automatic clearing.
• Password manager autofill in the suggestion strip.
• Material You colours and new Material 3 light and dark themes.
• Better emoji search, a default skin tone setting, and more recent emojis.
• Languages and layouts grouped together, with layout previews and per-language settings.
• Redesigned settings, setup wizard.
• A privacy page to review and delete learned words, and turn learning on or off.
• Physical keyboard support, a dedicated number pad, and improvements for tablets.

Version 4.0 supports newer Android versions and requires Android 5.0 or newer.

Download

Head to indic.app for download options, and see the full release notes for the complete list of changes.

Thank you to everyone who helped with code, layouts, dictionaries, testing, and feedback. Give v4.0 a try and let us know how it works for your language.