SwiftKey Flow Adds Swype-like Gestures

The popular Android keyboard replacement SwiftKey will soon have gesture support to better compete with other keyboards like Swype.

SwiftKey is best known for its great autocorrect and predictive text. The keyboard is smart enough to break up multiple words if the user misses the keyboard, and will recommend the next word the user will want to type before they even type it. With SwiftKey Flow, the team is bringing that same functionality to a gliding keyboard.

With SwiftKey Flow, users don’t need to take their fingers off the screen to spell out words. Instead users just glide their fingers to the next letter of the word and the keyboard will figure it out. Swype and a number of other keyboards used the same functionality for a long time, but now the feature comes with SwiftKey’s predictive technology.

One big feature for SwiftKey Flow is the ability of the keyboard to guess long words that users are trying to type. Just starting long words like archaeologists or zoology is enough for the keyboard to guess and complete the word.

SwiftKey Flow will still predict the next word users will want to type to make writing out messages faster. Gliding should make typing faster in general for users who want to use it.

From the press release it looks like SwiftKey Flow is part of an update for the current SwiftKey keyboard in the Google Play Store. The new feature isn’t available yet, but SwiftKey VIPs will soon get a chance to try to closed beta of the new app by signing up on this page.