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Comment by 627467 | Hacker News Reader

Any keyboard incapable of simultaneously (without switching) support multiple languages is a deal breaker for me... Unfortunately it seems like gboard is the only one that supports this

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I use SwiftKey with multiple languages and only need to switch when I want to use a non-Latin-script language.

But I agree with the main point, will wait for FUTO Keyboard to support multiple simultaneous languages before I try it.

One of the main reasons I won't switch to iOS.

Someone at Apple must have heard you.

Apparently latest version of iOS keyboard allows for this kind of language mix ( heard about it second hand from an iOS user)

It does, and it really annoys me! I use English 99% of the time, but it decides I’m using another language about 50% of the time I start a new sentence! There doesn’t seem to be a way to turn it off, either.

It's essential for me too, ended up just using SwiftKey / GBoard with the network permission revoked on GrapheneOS.

I switched from GBoard because it's predictions for Arabic were horrendous, made swipe typing unusable.

Checkout heliboard: https://github.com/Helium314/HeliBoard

SwiftKey does too..

How does that work?

(I use Gboard with English and Korean and have to switch.)

I’m on iPhone, using English and Dutch with the built in keyboard and it’s pretty seamless. Basically the layout doesn’t change (it’s always qwerty) but it will detect the language I’m typing and spell check for that language. That might only be possible/easy for languages with a (mostly) common alphabet.

Edit: there’s also a button to force the language if I want to override it. It also seems to read the text on screen or remember what apps use what language as it will auto-select the right language most of the time.

It works when using multiple languages that share the same writing system (the Latin alphabet). It means that you have a single keyboard, but the words that swipe or auto complete are from more than one language; generally the predictive nature means that when you switch languages it's pretty good at predicting future words are from the same language.

It also means things like you get all the diacritics from all of the languages when you long press.

I was studying French, while also working with several Polish people, so I set my keyboard to simultaneously English, French, and Polish, and then I was able to do French lessons without switching, and also able to write my Polish coworkers names easily.

Swiftkey by Microsoft also supports this.

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