Welcome to Alternative Keyboard Apps

Welcome, one and all, to what appears to be Imzy's first community dedicated to ergonomics. The issue I hope to tackle here is limited awareness of non-standard keyboard apps, because in my opinion the static QWERTY keyboard (even augmented with trace/swipe/gesture typing) is a huge waste of the potential inherent to touchscreen-based soft keyboards. (Which is not to say that Google Keyboard et al. are bad keyboards—they're perfectly usable. But I want more than that.)

I personally have the following keyboard apps installed, and I plan to post reviews for most or all of them in the coming weeks.

  • MessagEase Keyboard
  • 5-Tiles Pro
  • Dasher
  • GKOS Keyboard
  • Google Keyboard (English (US) (PC))
  • Novakey
  • DotDash Keyboard

If you would like to review any apps yourself (including ones already covered, reviewing the same product from multiple POVs is great) then feel free.

(Side note: "QWERTY-like" as used in this community refers not to the specific arrangement of letters, but to the basic idea behind that layout. (A static array of "keys" where each key corresponds to a single letter, such as might be done with a standard physical keyboard.) So Dvorak and AZERTY both count as "QWERTY-like".)