The best keyboard for the iPhone

The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are by far the biggest smartphones Apple has ever made. Those big screens are great for everything from browsing the web, to watching video, to playing games. But aside from being more difficult to put in your pocket, it can be hard to type on these larger phones, especially with one hand. Banging out a quick message or email with an iPhone 6 Plus in one hand and a piping hot coffee in the other can be quite a chore.

Let's face it, Apple is never going to add a physical keyboard to the iPhone to make typing easier. But iOS 8 does let you install third-party keyboard apps that can make your thumbs happier. Since iOS 8's release last fall, there have been countless keyboards added to the App Store, everything from keyboards for straight typing to options that let you easily insert images and GIFs into your messages. Installing any one of these keyboards is similar to any other app: you download it from the App Store and enable it via the iPhone's Settings app.

Putting GIFs and wild emoji in your messages is a ton of fun, but if you're looking for the most efficient way to input text into your iPhone, there are a handful of options to look at. And of those options, there's a clear winner.

The Winner

If you’re looking for the best typing experience on the iPhone, whether that’s with one hand or two, you want SwiftKey. It’s fast and responsive for traditional tap-typing with your thumbs, has a super useful tracing feature for one-thumb use, and has the best word prediction you can get. The word prediction is so good that oftentimes I don’t even need to type any words — SwiftKey already knows what I’m planning to say.

SwiftKey works across a wide variety of apps, but due to the way iOS handles third-party keyboards, there are some limitations. Namely, you can’t quickly use iOS’ pretty excellent voice dictation with SwiftKey, nor can you use it to input passwords or reply to messages from the lock screen. (The default iOS keyboard will show up automatically in both of those latter instances.) And despite Apple issuing numerous updates since iOS 8 came out, third-party keyboards tend to crash in the Messages app and when using Spotlight every once in a while. It’s not annoying enough for me to stop using SwiftKey entirely, but it can be frustrating at times.

SwiftKey has a few different themes (light, dark, and a “holiday” theme that’s out of season three-quarters of the year) and the standard autocorrect, double-space for period, and auto-capitalization features of most modern keyboards. But the key to its success is the word prediction, which can tap your Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, and Evernote accounts, plus your contacts list to personalize predictions based on how you communicate. It’s brilliant and makes SwiftKey much smarter than other keyboards.

The Runner Up

If you’re not interested in SwiftKey’s cloud-based word prediction or tracing features, you should use Apple’s built-in iOS keyboard. It’s by far the most reliable keyboard option on the iPhone, and doesn’t require any work to set it up.

While the standard iOS keyboard doesn’t have tracing, theming, or other popular features of third-party keyboards, it has intelligent word prediction based on context, great response, and a fantastic tap-typing experience. The contextual word prediction and autocorrect is particularly cool: the keyboard will suggest different words if you’re writing a casual iMessage to a friend compared to composing a formal email to your boss.

Apple’s own keyboard also has the advantage of offering easy access to voice dictation and working everywhere you can type text on the iPhone — including the lock screen and in password fields.

The Others