@rrhoover hey, actually it has been really challenging... Building the emoji part was ok but trying to build a keyboard like Apple's native keyboard was incredibly hard (not sure I would try to do that again :)
I think the thing that apple does really well, and is generally unnoticeable until you try to make it yourself, is that they have this constant and very intelligent autocorrection that they apply to characters and words that you mistype.
On mobile the keys are so close together, so mistyping is really common, and apple have managed to find a way to be really smart about how they determine if they keys you tap actually make sense in terms of real words.
I think the 3rd party keyboards that can do that really well will be the ones that win, but that's a job for a proper team. It's super tricky to get right. Happy to chat keyboard dev with anyone else who is making keyboards!
@rrhoover@davidkmckinney we've just submitted an iOS 8 keyboard - couldn't agree more!
I was very surprised to find that Apple didn't give developers access to a decent autocorrect API... almost all of our time was spent trying to figure this out, and not on the unique aspects of our keyboard.
I really like this. I usually don't keep extra keyboards because of the need to toggle back to the regular one, but I don't think I'll need to do that with emoji type because it's not really a replacement keyboard, it's a visual companion. Since I don't use the predictive type feature I'm not losing anything by having this on all the time.
@TomLimongello hey tom, hope you like it. I find it really interesting to hear about how people use their keyboards. (Quite a few seem to turn off auto-correct or predictive text). I used to be the same, but I've found that the native apple keyboards have gotten really good now.
I made this as a little side project for the weekends when I'm not working on the Product Hunt iOS app. Hope you like it.
It's a bit like predictive text, but instead of suggesting words for you, the Emoji Type keyboard suggests matching emojis.
You can for example type "Philz" and it will suggest ☕️
Or maybe you prefer to dance💃
@chrismessina I love the new bebo - that's great reincarnation - but Emoji Type is just a very simple iOS keyboard that you can use in any app (Messages, Whatsapp, Snapchat etc).
The keyboard will find and suggest matching emojis as you type, or you can use it to quickly search for any emoji. It doesn't even matter if you're not sure what the emoji is called... Just type a word that is something like what you're looking for and it will show you any matches.
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