6 Tips To Use Your Android And Third Party Keyboards More Efficiently

By Kaushik

| Published: Friday, March 27, 2015, 12:39 [IST]

The usual keypad on your Android phone might not be the most appropriate form of input you desire. Perhaps a quick change on the way you type can help you type faster and more efficiently. If you are tired of tapping your keyboard you might try swiping across the screen to type your words.

A keyboard which makes near guesses about what's the next word in the scentence might also be one of your choice. One may also be bored of the form factor of the keyboard and wants a change from those blocky keys.

For whatever reason you're doing it for, changing a keyboard type in an Android phone is an easy affair. Android users have a lot of other keyboard options apart from the traditional one and may also use third party apps for the same.

Here's a step by step guide as to how you can change your keyboard settings in your Android smartphone. The sliders also show how to use third party apps with ease.

Change Your Android Keyboard Settings

Go to the "Settings" panel and scroll down to the System settings menu.

Change Your Android Keyboard Settings

Find the Language and Input tab and click on it.

Change Your Android Keyboard Settings

Choose the keyboard of your choice from the menu. You can also modify the settings of the keyboard you choose.

Choosing Third Party Keyboards

"Less is more" is the idea behind Fleksy. This is a keypad with minimal key configurations. So minimal that you won't even find the spacebar, comma or full-stop on the keyboard. It is a simple QWERTY configuration with just three rows of letters. You need to swipe across the keyboard if you want to add special characters or numbers.

Choosing Third Party Keyboards

The free SwiftKey keyboard arrives on the scene with a two-pronged attack: Swype-style keypad swiping, plus three-button word prediction that learns how you type by scanning your social networking posts (assuming you give the app permission). SwiftKey can also download "trending" words and phrases from the cloud, perfect for predicting topical turns of phrase.

Choosing Third Party Keyboards

One of the first custom keyboards ever for Android, Swype introduced the whole swiping-to-type idea to the smartphone world. The keypad still shines even after everyone else (including Google) copied its clever idea.