SwiftKey Note app review

posted by Daniel P. / Jan 31, 2014, 9:33 AM

Developer: Touch Type Ltd	Download: iOS
Category: Productivity	Price: Free

You've heard about Evernote, right? You also know the SwiftKey keyboard, which has topped the Editor's Picks and bestsellers lists in the Google Play Store for a while now. These two had the brilliant idea to join forces for the rumored SwiftKey debut on iOS, integrating the award-winning virtual keyboard into the SwiftKey Note application that you can download to your iPhone right now. Given how Apple frowns at third-party anything on its platform, it seems like a brilliant move, as the app can be marketed as simply a note-taking one, of which there are thousands in the App Store.

The Note app uses SwiftKey for text input (evidently), with its excellent text-prediction, corrections and formatting functionality. The keyboard's layout itself, however, doesn't differ at all from the stock iOS one, down to the pop-up animation of the key presses, so Apple doesn't have much to hold against the Note app. The only place you'd know you are on SwiftKey, is when the prediction algorithms start labeling words above the keyboard, when text autocorrects with them, or you try to format something via a simple swipe on the left. That one will reveal a few options for writing in bold, italic, aligning and so on, and that's it.

In addition, you can log in and sync with your Evernote account, and your notes there will get populated in the general list of SwiftKey Note to read and edit. You can arrange your stuff in Notebooks, and tag it for easier discoverability, meaning, naturally, that there is a decent search function that can spot individual notes, tags, and even Notebooks, when they become too much to look for manually. Sharing options include copying the whole note, or shooting it via an iMessage, Email or AirDrop it on another iOS device.

Overall, SwiftKey managed to bring its award-winning keyboard to iOS on the sly, without risking the ire of Apple, yet offering its excellent core services like prediction, formatting and corrections. The partnership with Evernote will ensure a vast user base, too, and soon SwiftKey Note might become your go-to note-taking app on iOS, which is certainly a goal of those two app makers. Unlike the Android version of the keyboard, the app is free for now, so you can head over to iTunes, and grab it to see if it will appeal to you better than the stock iOS keyboard.