KeyboardKit helps you build custom keyboard extensions for iOS and iPadOS, using Swift and SwiftUI. It extends the native keyboard APIs and provides you with a lot more functionality than is otherwise available.
KeyboardKit lets you create keyboards that mimic the native iOS keyboards in a few lines of code. These keyboards can be customized to great extent to change input keys, keyboard layout, design, behavior etc.
You can also use entirely custom views together with the rich features of KeyboardKit, to create completely custom keyboards. Most of the library can be used on all major Apple platforms.
KeyboardKit can be installed with the Swift Package Manager:
https://github.com/KeyboardKit/KeyboardKit.git
or with CocoaPods:
pod KeyboardKit
You can add the library to the main app, the keyboard extension and any other targets that need it. If you prefer to not have external dependencies, you can also just copy the source code into your app.
KeyboardKit supports iOS 14, macOS 11, tvOS 14 and watchOS 7.
KeyboardKit is localized in 61 keyboard-specific locales (read more):
🇦🇱 🇦🇪 🇦🇲 🇧🇾 🇧🇬 🇦🇩 🏳️ 🇭🇷 🇨🇿 🇩🇰
🇳🇱 🇧🇪 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🇺🇸 🇪🇪 🇫🇴 🇵🇭 🇫🇮 🇫🇷
🇧🇪 🇨🇭 🇬🇪 🇩🇪 🇦🇹 🇨🇭 🇬🇷 🇺🇸 🇮🇱 🇭🇺
🇮🇸 🇮🇩 🇮🇪 🇮🇹 🇰🇿 🇹🇯 🇹🇯 🇹🇯 🇱🇻 🇱🇹
🇲🇰 🇲🇾 🇲🇹 🇲🇳 🇳🇴 🇮🇷 🇵🇱 🇵🇹 🇧🇷 🇷🇴
🇷🇺 🇷🇸 🇷🇸 🇸🇰 🇸🇮 🇪🇸 🇰🇪 🇸🇪 🇹🇷 🇺🇦
🇺🇿
KeyboardKit comes packed features to help you build amazing and powerful keyboards:
- 💥 Actions - KeyboardKit comes with keyboard actions like characters, emojis, actions, custom ones etc.
- 🎨 Appearance - KeyboardKit comes with an appearance engine that lets you style your keyboards.
- 💡 Autocomplete - KeyboardKit can perform autocomplete and present suggestions as the user types.
- 🗯 Callouts - KeyboardKit can show input callouts as the user types, as well as callouts with secondary actions.
- 🎤 Dictation - (BETA) KeyboardKit can perform dictation from the keyboard extension.
- 😊 Emojis - KeyboardKit defines emojis and emoji categories, as well as emoji keyboards.
- ⌨️ External Keyboards - KeyboardKit lets you detect whether or not an external keyboard is connected.
- 👋 Feedback - KeyboardKit keyboards can give and haptic feedback feedback as the user types.
- 👆 Gestures - KeyboardKit comes with keyboard-specific gestures that you can use in your own keyboards.
- 🔤 Input - KeyboardKit supports
alphabetic,numeric,symbolicand completely custom input sets. - ⌨️ Keyboard - KeyboardKit supports different keyboard types, provides observable keyboard state, etc.
- 🔣 Layout - KeyboardKit supports creating keyboard layouts for various devices, locales etc.
- 🌐 Localization- KeyboardKit defines keyboard-specific locales with localized content and assets.
- 👁 Previews - KeyboardKit has utilites that help previewing keyboard views and components in SwiftUI.
- ➡️ Proxy - KeyboardKit extends
UITextDocumentProxyand makes it do a lot more. - 🚏 Routing - KeyboardKit lets you route text to other destinations than the main app.
- ⬅️ RTL - KeyboardKit supports RTL (right-to-left) locales, such as Arabic, Persian, Kurdish Sorani etc.
- ⚙️ Settings - KeyboardKit has tools for accessing and linking to an app's keyboard settings.
The online documentation has a getting-started guide that will help you get started with the library.
To make your custom keyboard extension use KeyboardKit, just install and import KeyboardKit, then make it inherit KeyboardInputViewController instead of UIInputController:
import KeyboardKit
class KeyboardController: KeyboardInputViewController {}This will by default set up a fully working U.S. English keyboard. You can then override any functions to customize how it sets up the keyboard, inject your own services, for instance:
override viewWillSetupKeyboard() {
super.viewWillSetupKeyboard()
setup(with: MyKeyboardView())
}
For more information, please see the online documentation and getting-started guide.
The online documentation has articles, code examples etc. that let you overview the various parts of the library and understand how they all connect to each other.
The online documentation is currently iOS-specific. To generate documentation for the other platforms, open the package in Xcode, select a simulator then run Product/Build Documentation.
KeyboardKit Pro extends KeyboardKit with pro features, such as localized keyboards and services, autocomplete, dictation, emoji skintones, additional views etc. It lets you create fully localized keyboards with a single line of code.
This project has a Demo folder with a demo app that lets you try out KeyboardKit and KeyboardKit Pro. The app has an input text field and shows you how to display the state of a keyboard extension, link to system settings etc.
The demo app has 5 keyboard extensions:
Englishuses KeyboardKit and has aSystemKeyboardwith the standard, English locale.Unicodeuses KeyboardKit and has aSystemKeyboardwith unicode-based input keys.Customuses KeyboardKit and has aSystemKeyboardwith custom keys, layout and appearance.Prouses KeyboardKit Pro and has aSystemKeyboardwith all LRT locales, autocomplete etc.ProRtluses KeyboardKit Pro and has aSystemKeyboardwith all RTL locales, autocomplete etc.
Just open and run the demo app, then enable the keyboards you want to try under System Settings. Note that you need to enable full access to try some features, like audio and haptic feedback.
KeyboardKit is trusted and proudly sponsored by the following companies:
KeyboardKit is open-source and completely free, but you can sponsor this project on GitHub Sponsors, upgrade to KeyboardKit Pro or get in touch for freelance work, paid support etc.
Feel free to reach out if you have questions or if you want to contribute in any way:
- Website: keyboardkit.com
- Mastodon: @[email protected]
- Twitter: @getkeyboardkit
- E-mail: [email protected]
KeyboardKit is available under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more info.