Google makes Gboard for Android official

A few days ago the first iteration of Gboard for Android surfaced online, despite the fact that Google hadn't yet updated its keyboard's description in the Play Store. Two small updates later, Gboard for Android is now official, mere months after the keyboard was released for iOS.

Gboard is in fact the new name of the Google Keyboard app for Android, so you'll get it through an update for that, there's no need to install anything else. Gboard has support for writing in multiple languages at the same time, glide typing, voice typing, and built-in emoji and GIF search. Additionally, through a new G button you can instantly search Google for things such as nearby stores or restaurants, videos, images, news articles, sports scores, and so on, right from your keyboard, without ever leaving the app you were typing into. What's more, once you've found something interesting on Google you can share that into your conversation.

GIFs can be directly shared into apps that have added image keyboard support, and there aren't a lot of those at the moment, but their numbers are sure to grow within the next few weeks. Google says its Messenger, Allo, and Hangouts apps all have this functionality built-in already. Gboard learns as you type, so you don't have to manually add words to a personal dictionary - just type a word once and from that point on you'll be able to gesture type it or find it in suggestions. The learned words can be synced across devices if you enable that feature in the app's Settings.

One handed mode pins the keyboard to the left or right for easier access on phones with big screens, and there are quite a few themes available inside Gboard, which all let you choose if you want to see key borders or not. Gboard works in over 100 languages now, with more on the way in the coming months.

Source | Via