When I switched from Gboard to SwiftKey, I was looking for a few specific features that Microsoft's keyboard offered, and it won me over. But after using it for a while, I've discovered at least half a dozen more features unique to SwiftKey, features you simply won't find on Gboard.
From offline translation to typing without lifting your finger, SwiftKey offers features that make it a more capable keyboard on Android than Gboard.
Microsoft SwiftKey AI Keyboard
- OS
- Android, iOS
SwiftKey Keyboard is a powerful mobile keyboard app that uses AI to provide fast, accurate text prediction, personalized autocorrect, and multilingual support. It learns your typing style for smarter suggestions and offers swipe typing, emoji prediction, and customization options.
Offline translation
Fast translation without the internet
Both SwiftKey and Gboard offer multilingual support, where they can autocorrect and suggest words from any of your enabled languages without explicitly switching between them. They also include built-in translation features. Tap the Translate icon, choose the language, start typing, and it translates on the fly. The caveat with Gboard is that you need an internet connection for this to work.
SwiftKey, on the other hand, supports offline translation. Yes, you need to install the Microsoft Translator app from the Play Store for this to work. But set it up once, and SwiftKey will continue translating even when you're offline. The offline language packs are compact, and once downloaded, translation happens nearly instantly, faster than the online version, since there's no server round-trip.
Offline translation can come in handy when you're traveling or dealing with spotty connections. And I've found the accuracy to be just as good for common languages.
Flow through space
Type without lifting your finger
Gboard offers one of the best glide-to-type experiences on Android. The predictions are solid, and swiping between letters feels smooth. But there's one quirk that always bothered me: you can't add a space without lifting your finger.
SwiftKey supports something called Flow Through Space. You slide your finger from the last letter of a word to the spacebar, then immediately continue to the next word without lifting it. The keyboard recognizes when you pass over the spacebar and inserts the space automatically, letting you type multiple words in one continuous motion. Once you get used to it, it's hard to go back to the conventional glide-typing keyboards.
It might seem trivial, but it makes one-handed typing much smoother. Pair that with SwiftKey's excellent text predictions, which learn from your habits fast and start suggesting words before you even type based on when and where you're typing, and you've got a smarter keyboard.
Large trackpad and dedicated arrow keys
Turn the entire key area into a large trackpad
Gboard's gesture cursor control works as it should. Press and hold the spacebar, then glide to precisely place your cursor where you want it. But it's limited to horizontal movements only.
SwiftKey turns the entire keyboard into a trackpad. Long-press the spacebar, then move the cursor horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, including jumping between lines. This makes editing long paragraphs much easier since you're not restricted to moving left and right within a single line.
SwiftKey also lets you add dedicated arrow keys to the bottom of the keyboard. On Gboard, you'd have to toggle text editing mode to access arrow keys, which adds an extra step. Having them always visible means faster navigation when you're making quick edits.
Copilot integration
Helps with quick text formatting
Microsoft is pushing its Copilot AI assistant into all of its core products, including Microsoft 365, Edge, and Windows, and you'll find it in SwiftKey as well. Tap the Copilot icon on the toolbar, and you get access to two options.
First is Tone. It lets you highlight text and rewrite it in professional, casual, polite, or social post styles. Then we have the Editor mode that catches spelling and grammar mistakes as you type, and can suggest different phrasing to make your writing clearer. I don't use these features daily, but they come in handy for work emails where tone matters. Write out your frustration about a missed deadline, tap Professional, and it turns your rant into something appropriate.
Cross-device clipboard sync
Clipboard history syncs across devices
Gboard's clipboard saves your copied items for an hour before clearing them automatically. You can pin snippets you use often—addresses, email templates, phone numbers—and they'll stick around until you remove them. It's basic but gets the job done.
SwiftKey's clipboard works similarly, but it also syncs across devices. Sign in with your Microsoft account, enable Cloud Clipboard in SwiftKey's settings, and anything you copy on your Windows PC shows up on your phone. It works the other way too—copy something on Android and paste it on your laptop.
While Windows Phone Link offers similar clipboard syncing, SwiftKey doesn't need it running—the sync happens through the cloud. Copied items still expire after an hour unless you pin them, but the cross-device part makes it useful for moving text between devices without emailing yourself.
SwiftKey is still the best overall keyboard
SwiftKey does everything that the Gboard does and some more. Features like Flow Through Space, the trackpad-style cursor control, cross-device clipboard, and the offline translator make it a better keyboard in every way.
There are plenty of open-source alternatives to Gboard if privacy is your priority. But if you want a keyboard that goes beyond basic typing without sacrificing features, SwiftKey remains the best Gboard alternative.