Popular QWERTY app SwiftKey losing iOS support next month

In 2016, Microsoft bought virtual QWERTY keyboard app SwiftKey for $250 million. That's a quarter of a billion dollars, folks. But it appears that SwiftKey for iOS is about to shut down. According to an official statement from SwiftKey published by ZDNet, on October 5th support for the app will come to an end on iOS (but not on Android).

Today, SwiftKey's Chris Wolfe, the director of product management, said in a statement, "As of October 5, support for SwiftKey iOS will end and it will be delisted from the Apple App Store. Microsoft will continue support for SwiftKey Android as well as the underlying technology that powers the Windows touch keyboard. For those customers who have SwiftKey installed on iOS, it will continue to work until it is manually uninstalled or a user gets a new device. Please visit Support.SwiftKey.com for more information."

SwiftKey, at one time, was an extremely popular app and in fact, it was the top-grossing paid app in the Google Play Store in 2012 and 2013 before Microsoft bought it. Considering that it is only the iOS version of the app that is getting the big kiss-off, this decision might have something to do with how Apple's walled garden stifles the SwiftKey app. At the time Microsoft bought the SwiftKey app, Swiftkey's QWERTY and services were used on more than 300 million Android and iOS handsets.

SwiftKey uses a predictive algorithm to guess what word you are going to need to type next. Microsoft's SwiftKey website explains that SwiftKey is "the intelligent keyboard that learns your writing style, so you can type faster." As a result, this "means autocorrect actually works so you can get your point across fast, without errors." As long as iPhone users don't delete the app or buy a new iPhone, the SwiftKey app they installed prior to October 5th of 2022 will remain available to them (receiving no updates, though).

The app also allows you to input words by swiping across the keyboard. You can also select from over 100 themes, search for emojis, GIFs, and stickers, and integrate with the Microsoft To Do app to add tasks to your personal list of things you need to do.

If you own an iPhone and want to use SwiftKey, make sure to install the app before October 5th. If you have an Android phone, SwiftKey is going to be hanging around for some time. Since we like to be helpful, iOS users can install the app from here. Android users can install SwiftKey by tapping on this link.