You 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.
Selecting keyboards in Settings on Android.
Photograph: David Nield
When you have multiple keyboards installed, you can manage them on iOS by opening Settings, then choosing General > Keyboard > Keyboards. To swap between keyboards you’ve installed, tap and hold the globe icon that appears in the lower left corner of all your keyboards.
On Android, you can find your keyboards via System > Keyboard > On-screen keyboard from Settings. To switch between them, tap and hold on the globe icon that appears in the lower right corner whenever a keyboard is on the screen.
The Best Phone Keyboards to Try
Gboard (Android, iOS) is a good option to start with here. It's preinstalled by default on Pixel phones, but it's also an excellent keyboard pick for iPhones and Android phones not made by Google. It's fast and clean, works really well for GIFs, emoji, and stickers, and supports glide typing (where you swipe over letters to form words rather than tapping on each individual letter).
Then there's SwiftKey (Android, iOS), which is developed by Microsoft. As you might expect, there's Copilot AI integration built right in, so if you're stuck for something to say, you can use generative AI to do your writing for you. SwiftKey will also learn your writing style as you go, meaning autocorrections and suggestions get more accurate over time.
SwiftKey comes with a range of settings to play around with.
Photograph: David Nield
Typewise (Android, iOS) demonstrates how third-party keyboards can be a little out of the ordinary. It offers an unusual layout that makes use of hexagonal letter and character tiles, and which Typewise says can seriously speed up your typing speed. There's also support for multiple languages, AI integrations, and custom gestures.
You may be familiar with Grammarly from the web and the desktop (and from the recent news about its missteps), but the grammar and spell checker service is also available as a keyboard on iOS and as a keyboard extension on Android. As well as checking on your writing, Grammarly puts AI front and center: You can get writing suggestions from a prompt, for example, or change the tone of an existing message with a couple of taps.
If you're interested in customization options above everything else, then consider Mister Keyboard for iOS. It's stacked with ways to tweak the look and layout of your iPhone's keyboard, and to access features like emoji and the clipboard. Either pick one of the preset themes, or take pixel-by-pixel control over the keyboard.
Mister Keyboard isn't available for Android, but there is theming support in Futo Keyboard for Android. It also includes smart autocorrect and text editing tools, and prides itself on its privacy. The keyboard app doesn't ask for permission to connect to the internet, so you know that your keystrokes aren't being sent anywhere.
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