Third-party keyboards like Swype and Fleksy promise to make typing on iPhones and iPads faster with features like predictive text and swiping, but new third-party keyboard NinType goes even further, combining taps, swipes, and shortcuts to allow users to type more than 100 words per minute.
Created by app developer Yose Widjaja, NinType's magic comes from its ability to support two-handed swipe-based gestures for spelling out words. Using two thumbs, it's possible to use a combination of taps and swipes to write words and insert punctuation quickly.
The NinType typing experience is significantly different from the standard iOS typing experience, so it does take some time to adjust to the two-handed swipe and tap input. Users are advised to use the keyboard as a standard keyboard to begin with, inserting swipe-based words gradually to adjust to the difference.
NinType has a built-in game-like tutorial that's designed to walk users through all of the app's features, and it is deeply customizable with a top bar that can be arranged to a user's liking, different visual effects, extensive shortcut options, and settings for nearly every aspect of the keyboard. There are a number of handy gestures in NinType, including a swipe on the spacebar to move the cursor, a swipe on the backspace key to quickly delete words, edge slides for inserting punctuation, and flick to autocomplete. NinType does not require users to enable full access.
MacRumors went hands-on with the NinType keyboard to show off how it works and to highlight some key features like themes and the ability to easily insert emoji. NinType also includes features like a built-in calculator, support for multiple languages, a tool for counting words typed per minute, and a "word transformer" mode for stylizing the words that you type.
Like most iOS 8 keyboards, NinType occasionally experiences some hiccups that cause it to fail to show up at times, but this appears to be more of an issue with iOS than with NinType itself. Aside from that, we ran into a few crashing problems during our time testing the keyboard, but the developer has been hard at work pushing updates and resolving any lingering issues.
NinType is available for both the iPhone and the iPad and can be downloaded from the App Store for $4.99. [Direct Link]
