Whether on Android or iOS, you likely already use Google Maps for navigation. You use Gmail for email. You use YouTube to watch videos. And you’re right to do so. You’d be even more right to ditch whatever junk keyboard your smartphone shipped with for Gboard, another Google staple that works like a dream.
Lots of Android devices—including the Pixel line[1] of premium phones—already use Gboard by default. It's been widely available to download for a year and a half. But if you have an iPhone, or a Samsung Galaxy, or anything else that doesn’t live up to the high quality swipe-type experience that your fingers deserve, it’s time for an upgrade.
But my keyboard’s fine, you say, which, maybe, sure. But since when did you settle for fine? Fine is an ice cream sundae with no sprinkles. It’s a movie trailer without that bwoooom sound. And it’s a smartphone keyboard that doesn’t let you search for just the right emoji by drawing it.
Yes, that’s right. With Gboard, you can draw a cat on your screen to view all the cat-related emoji. You can draw a house to view all the building emoji. You can draw the letters ‘O’ and ‘K’ to view the OK emoji, if for whatever reason you don’t want just write OK in your text. And that’s just one of its parlor tricks.
Gboard contains too many other useful features to tick off every single one, but the shortcut to understanding the scope of its powers is the knowledge that it has Google built right in. That means you can search the entirety of the internet directly from your keyboard. You can translate words and phrases in real time from...