We agree with you, and really wish Apple would provide an API for third-party keyboards to trigger dictation functionality. However, they do not, even though they easily could do it without providing access the microphone itself which could be a security concern. Please see:

http://support.padkeys.com/knowledgebase/articles/1087564

Please let Apple know this is functionality you’d like to see.

As we’ve said elsewhere, it is not our intention to innovate the keyboard layout. We take the PadKeys layouts straight from Apple’s Macbook keyboards, which you can see on this page (including French):

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201794

I can’t really speak to WHY the period requires a shift in the French layout, but we assume people are used to it.

However, please let us know if the Apple page is wrong / outdated, or if there is some other reason we should not be using the published Macbook layout in this case.

This would conflict with the popup key menus some of these show. We now have swipe access the shifted versions similarly to the system keyboard in iOS 11.

Unfortunately Apple / iOS provides us no access to the actual text area you are typing into so we cannot draw red underlines or anything else. If you’d just like to turn off the PadKeys Suggestions bar regardless, go into PadKeys settings and switch autocorrect to corrections-only or off.

I’m sorry to give a negative answer on this, but we don’t currently have plans to support Russian or any other non-Latin-script language. In addition we lack a source of autocorrect data for Russian.

If our plans change in the future we will post here. The languages PadKeys supports are listed in our App Store description.

I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but although we would love to do this, Apple/iOS does not provide third-party keyboards any way to tell the app what text to select.

As we always say with this sort of issue, please let Apple know directly that you’d like to see this functionality. We’ve already submitted an enhancement request, but the more people they hear from the more likely they’ll consider it something worth doing. Thanks!

Unfortunately, Apple’s programming interface does not allow us to do this. Third party keyboards have very limited ways they can interact with the rest of the system.

Unfortunately iOS doesn’t provide us with any way to implement these. We have requested it from Apple and if anything changes we’ll reopen this issue.

We have “short mode” which frees up even more space than this would: https://youtu.be/F_Z1gVPSM4Q

While a hidden number row would provide an alternative way to save screen space, this plus the separate number/punctuation layout is so similar to what the system keyboard already provides that it would be better simply to use that.

This is due to an iOS bug with screen adjustment for third-party keyboards taller than default. Unfortunately keyboards are not allowed to use transparency so we cannot work around this as suggested. We DO offer a “short mode” though which will make PadKeys shorter than the system keyboard and avoid the problem. Just long-press the keyboard-away key while in landscape to switch to short mode.

Having these “extra” keys is the whole purpose of PadKeys. And we don’t want to overload with options. We do make the ‘A’ key slightly wider to make it easier to hit.

PadKeys’ own row can be turned off in its Settings. Unfortunately, neither PadKeys nor any other third-party keyboard is able to access or show Apple’s internal autocorrect/suggestions facilities. The bar itself is shown (unless you’ve turned it off), but you’ll get only the undo/redo buttons and whatever the app you are using adds.

We’d love to do this, but unfortunately Apple provides no way for a third-party keyboard to influence the selection. Not even in iOS 10. We have sent in requests for them to provide this kind of functionality, but it seems not to even be on their radar screen.

Hello,

This is something that would need to be done by the app developer. Please ask them to get in touch with us if they need more information how to fix it.

Thanks!

Although it is tempting to try to optimize the layouts, our current approach is to follow the Apple laptop keyboard layouts exactly. This way your fingers will “remember” where to go without having to think if you’re on an iPad or a regular computer.

We have the ‘ç’ because we are following the Mac notebook/desktop keyboard layout for Spain. Did we make a mistake here? Or did Spanish recently stop using the ‘ç’ but the keyboard hardware just hasn’t caught up yet?

In any case, the ‘;’ is already available on one of the other keys when ‘shift’ is pressed. Are there any other possibilities to use, or any standards we can follow here?

We implemented “short mode”: in landscape mode you may long-press the keyboard-away key to get a much shorter keyboard, which leaves much more room to see the app itself.

Although the extra space on the bottom row looks a bit odd, we feel it’s important to have it to prevent errors with those keys. It can be quite a pain if you accidentally switch keyboards when trying to hit ‘Opt’ or space, for example.

As far as the backspace key, it is frequently used and it can be nice to have a bigger target to aim for.

That said, we continue to consider changes like this depending on how many people are in favor of them.

The internal logic for handling the double-tap keys is complex, particularly when multiple ones are involved. We would need to hear convincing use cases and/or substantial user support, before undertaking this change.