What Is Gboard? Google's Smart Keyboard Explained

Gboard is the keyboard from Google for your phone, packed with features to make typing effortless.

​In the market for an intuitive way to text, send out the latest tweet or type out documents on your mobile device? Other keyboards may offer grammar checking, and "next word" prediction, but can they predict whole phrases? In the right context? In over 1,000 languages? Google's Gboard virtual keyboard offers this, along with a ton of other neat bells and whistles.

While the built-in keyboards on Android and iOS powered devices provide features enough to the task of communication done, Google's Gboard (short for Google Keyboard) offers a more robust set of features. The virtual keyboard, while it comes as the default keyboard for some Android devices, is available on both Android, and iOS app stores.

What Is Gboard?

Simply put, Gboard is a tech giant, Google's answer to bad spelling and bad grammar, as well as bridge across language barriers. The virtual typing app for Android, an iOS device offers all the features of a typing app, with a lot of helpful Google functionality built into it.

The app is designed to make communication through smaller screens much easier, and more intuitive. It features an on-keyboard Google Search feature, along with predictive text, supporting over 1,000 languages.

What It Offers

Launched in 2016, as Google Keyboard, Gboard has evolved - through a series of updates - into the feature-rich typing app it is today. Aside from the above-mentioned features, Google's Gboard comes with Google Translate integrated into the app for easier - and faster - text and voice translation.

Did we mention voice capabilities? You read right, Gboard for Android, and iOS also comes with built-in voice recognition, which comes in handy for hands-free texting/typing, through the app's extended Voice Dictation feature.

In addition to that, the app allows for Glide Typing, which - aided by Gboard's predictive capabilities - reduces much of the sweatwork associated with typing, and enables one to 'draw' words by swiping one's fingers across the keyboard. Gboard also comes loaded with multiple themes - allowing one to customize their virtual keyboard to fit their device's user-set theme -  that adds personal experience.

Though the built-in Google Search function was removed from the Android version of the app back in 2019, one can still access it on the iOS platform's variant. Gboard is also designed to make it that much more convenient to navigate the web, and social platform's, not just for business. For this purpose, the team behind Gboard has integrated emojis, GIFs, and Stickers into the keyboard.

The typing app will actually suggest GIFs relevant to your topic, while you type. This, along with a fully stocked emoji, sticker library so one can properly personalize their communicative experience.

In Closing

The closest comparison, in terms of typing apps, is Grammarly, which is specifically targeted at writers. Gboard on the other hand goes beyond merely making one's writing more professional, it offers a lifestyle-friendly experience, enabling an unprecedented level of personalization, and integration into Google's other services.

This makes Google Gboard, a one-stop communication platform that enables easier communication, across an array of languages. Folks may also appreciate the platform's built-in clipboard, which allows for the storage and accessing of more than a single block of text, and information.