The digital age is accompanied by the rapid development of the IT industry. New ideas, systems and even worlds appear. This riot of technology and the most mundane things, even such as the on-screen keyboard, were affected. Among the 'advantages' of ultra-modern keyboards are advertising modules, uncontrolled automation, active consumption of electricity and an irresistible desire to go online. Exit at any cost, even when all sync and network features are disabled.
However, Multiling O Keyboard does not have all these newfangled features. Can a modern keyboard do without all this? Let's find out!
When I first bought myself a smartphone, I used a standard keyboard and was quite happy with it (HTC had a very good standard keyboard at that time). But after some time, the swype keyboard appeared on the market with its innovative method of text input, which received the same name. After trying several keyboards that can do this, I settled on SlideIT, which I used for a while. Unfortunately, as time went on, the program became heavier and slower, until eventually the developer was completely lost beyond the horizon. The search for worthy analogues each time led to TouchPal and SwiftKey and would have continued until now, until one day I came across in the comments on some resource a laudatory review of the hero of this article. Understandable skepticism gave way to complete delight and desire to tell others about the keyboard.
The first thing that catches your eye is that the application stands out among its 'colleagues in the shop' even before installation, such a short list of permissions for the application is rarely seen. If you compare it with the lists of popular counterparts on Google Play, you inevitably ask yourself: “Can a modern keyboard really do without access to your location, your files in storage and unlimited Internet access?”
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| Here's how much it takes to use one of the most popular keyboards on Google Play: TouchPal and SwiftKey | And here's what you need Multiling O Keyboard | |
Its size is no less surprising – the difference with competitors in memory space is noticeably more than an order of magnitude.
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| The difference in app 'weight' is impressive, isn't it? | ||
The absence of unnecessary permissions and the desire to surf the Internet allows you not to worry about theft of personal data, as, for example, in the recent scandal with the AI.Type keyboard, when the application collected everything it could reach and put it into an unpaired database accessible to anyone whatever. The small size is manifested in the reactive speed of the application.
Speaking of transferring personal data to third parties, this is what accumulated in the firewall logs after installing competing keyboards, and this despite the fact that I, in general, did not use these keyboards.
The second thing that attracts attention on Google Play is the lack of deposits of themes for this keyboard. Instead, the developer offers to customize its appearance yourself. You can specify the background colors of keyboard segments and key groups, symbols, as well as the size, position of elements, and so on. It's impossible to make an advanced theme with various graphic refinements, such as stitches along the edges of the keys, but it will not be difficult to choose a color scheme to match the design of the main interface.
An example of registration. Yes, it looks very, very bad, but it gives an idea of the extent to which you can customize the appearance of the keyboard.
In addition to the main functions, this keyboard has a set of useful little things in everyday life, such as storing the clipboard history and predicting the next word. Also, when entering numbers, the keyboard can work as a simple calculator, for example, if you enter (1 + 2) 3, then the forecast will be '= 9', as well as a variant in which the whole example is replaced by the result.
And, finally, and most importantly, what makes this keyboard stand out among the host of similar programs on Google Play – fully customizable layouts are implemented here. That is, you can actually place any UTF character anywhere, completely customizing the key layout to suit your needs. Finally, you can take out the letter 'E' separately! Finally, you can bring the most used additional symbols closer, and not click on additional screens, because the developer wanted to hide them. And, importantly, swiping on custom layouts still works. Alternative layouts (other languages, numeric keypad, emoticons) are also fully customizable. My main layout, for example, looks like this:
And to demonstrate the possibilities of customizing the keyboard, I made such an indecency (just in case, I remind you that the pictures are clickable)
Verse by Dmitry Alexandrovich Prigov
It is worth considering, however, that the keyboard was written by a geek, and not by a team of managers and designers – everything is purely utilitarian and is not always accompanied by a well-thought-out interface. in the WEB-interface mode, for which the local browser page opens. It doesn’t cause much inconvenience, but it doesn’t look very good. The option of configuring the keyboard is also implemented for advanced users, for this you can edit the text configuration file and load it into the application. With all this, the unsightly appearance of the layout settings menu does not affect the application's operation in any way, and the user will rarely enter it.
Layout settings page
As a result, Multiling O keyboard is a keyboard that completely stands out from the mainstream of modern software. It is a well-optimized, no-nonsense program that does exactly what it was designed to do, allowing the user to customize the input system to their personal needs. In the piggy bank of advantages it is worth adding complete free and no advertising. Of the minuses, one can only name a rather modest Russian dictionary, but most keyboards suffer from this.
For me personally, it is the best that is at the moment among the on-screen keyboards for Android – smartphones. And therefore, I strongly recommend that you try it, unless, of course, you have attunement phobia.
You can install the program using the link:
