Thankfully, iOS supports third-party keyboards that allow you to escape Apple's typing hell, including one from Microsoft. Microsoft released a keyboard for Apple's mobile OS, called Word Flow Keyboard, bringing the beloved keyboard from Windows phone to iOS. When it first launched, it brought a lot of hate towards Microsoft from the Windows community, because it delivered additional features that are nowhere to be found on Microsoft's mobile platform. It was, however, well-received by the rest of the technology community. I have publicly criticised the QuickType keyboard multiple times in the past, especially before iOS 8 where the third-party keyboard support was added, and my opinions still haven't changed. The stock iOS keyboard is painful to use. I can't understand how so many people suffer with it everyday.@DennisBednarz pic.twitter.com/NnAmyBqN8d — Dennis Bednarz (@DennisBednarz) 10 January 2017 So, is Word Flow the solution I have been looking for? There is only one way to find out. Getting started with Word Flow for iOS Upon installing Word Flow for the first time, you're greeted with a welcome screen showing you how to enable the keyboard. If you've ever used a third-party keyboard on iOS, you are already familiar with this screen. Every keyboard that you install tells you to go to the settings, enable it then allow "full access" which means the keyboard will be able to show up in more text fields, which may contain sensitive information. This could be an issue for people who value their privacy but it didn't stop me. Best VPN providers 2020: Learn about ExpressVPN, NordVPN & more After getting into the app you see a handful of options for personalizing it. The keyboard has a huge library of themes available by default, but if you're like me, you probably want to make your own theme by uploading a picture from the photos app. By doing that, I managed to get a nice, all-white keyboard that blends well into iOS except for dark-themed apps such as Groove Music or Discord.

How well does it work? The Word Flow Keyboard is light-years ahead of Apple's solution, and it lets you type messages, notes and more, way faster. When using the QuickType keyboard on iOS, I often had to go back, retype something, correct wrongly-autocorrected words and get frustrated with how a few lines of text took me a couple of seconds each time to fix. That is not the case with Word Flow. As many Windows Phone users already know, the Windows Phone 8.1 keyboard had incredible typing recognition that rarely required you to double-check to make sure you didn't embarrass yourself before pressing the "send" button. Windows 10 Mobile may be a different story, but Word Flow for iOS manages to port that experience over very well. It may not have the same accuracy as its older brother from Microsoft's own platform, but it certainly is impressive how much of a difference it is compared to the stock iOS keyboard. Word Flow also supports swiping, which is a very useful feature once you get used to it. It allows for even faster typing than with the usual taps on the keys. Most phones support swipe input by default nowadays, including Windows 10 Mobile and most Android versions, but Apple decided to leave this highly-requested feature out for some reason and let third-party developers handle it. Based on my tests, the Word Flow keyboard on iOS actually beats the Windows 10 version in every way. Its predictions are helpful, swiping usually results in the words you want, typing accuracy is incredible and auto-correction is balanced. It's pretty sad to see Microsoft develop such a great keyboard while leaving its own system to rot, but the fact is, TONS of people use iOS. Using an iPhone in the Microsoft ecosystem Additional features in Word Flow keyboard for iOS Word Flow comes with some really great features, in the form of a built-in search engine. We have seen this idea implemented in Google's Gboard before, and this is Microsoft's take. It features GIF and photo search, contact search, regular web search, as well as an emoji search, which is quite useful when you can't find that one emoji you want.

The keyboard includes a weird button to the right, above the "P" key. This button is used to activate the one-handed mode. As smartphones get bigger and bigger, it's almost a requirement nowadays to use two hands while typing. While it hasn't been a huge issue for me, some people really hate having to do that. The one-handed mode tries to solve that by tilting the keyboard slightly in order to fit within reach of a regular user's thumb. It certainly looks weird to use, but after using it for a few minutes, you start to get used to its unique layout. The one-handed mode also supports swiping, which is rare on an iOS keyboard.