Introduction
Hi everyone,
I'm excited to share something with all of you that I've been working on for a little while.
As many of you know, iOS — and touch screens in general — don't have an easy, efficient way to type without seeing the screen. If you've used Apple products for a long time, you might remember Fleksy, and later FlickType — both keyboards that helped this cause greatly, and then stopped being maintained. I've missed that typing experience immensely, so I've created FloType: a blind/low-vision friendly keyboard that lets you type quickly and accurately, with gestures that are already familiar to you.
What it is
FloType is a VoiceOver-first keyboard for blind and low-vision users, inspired by the eyes-free typing approach that Fleksy pioneered and FlickType refined. You type by tapping approximately where you think the keys would be on a standard QWERTY keyboard, and FloType reads your finger patterns to figure out the word you're typing. Swipe right to commit it to the text field, and down to find other suggestions if that's not the word you intended. Spacing is handled for you automatically, and swiping right after a word lets you insert punctuation — or emoji, if you've configured them in settings.
What you can do
- Tap to type, swipe to commit. Tap anywhere in the keyboard area; swipe right to enter the word. Swipe up or down to cycle suggestions. Swipe left to delete.
- A rotor, right in the keyboard. Hold two fingers and twist — just like VoiceOver's rotor — to move the cursor by characters, words, or lines.
- Hear it all back. A four-finger tap reads the entire text field aloud.
- Numbers, symbols, and emoji. Plus a Quick Keys row for fast access to common symbols.
- Light and Dark themes, with a Large Keys option for big, bold, high-contrast keys.
- Customizable sounds and haptics for typing, swiping, and more.
FloType adapts and learns the way you tap over time, all learning stays on your device, and it works across the apps you already use through the iOS keyboard extension.
FloType is currently in beta — and I'd appreciate your help
FloType is in active beta; this means there might be some bugs I haven't dealt with yet, and it may not always behave as expected — but that's where you come in. I still have many more features I'd like to add before an official App Store release, but I wanted to put it in your hands first. Play with it, enjoy it, test it, and give me any feedback you have — suggestions, bugs, feature requests, anything. Please be as honest as possible; my goal is to make this an incredible keyboard for everyone who uses it.
** Join the beta here**
Questions, feedback, or just want to say hi? Reach me at [email protected].
Thanks for giving it a try.
— Rocco
FloType is an independent app. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Fleksy or FlickType in any way. These names are used only to describe the kind of typing experience FloType offers.
Additional Notes:
- Typing inside of safari/a browser/web view is buggy right now. So if you reply to this thread, or any other on AppleVis in mail or Safari etc using FloType, it will not work properly. This is mostly due to an Apple bug with third-party keyboards that I am actively working to fix. This creates the garbled mess/no spacing between words that some have been experiencing.
- Direct touch needs to be on for the keyboard area to actually show you the keyboard when VoiceOver is on. I'm also in the process of creating an onboarding flow that should address this, but I will add it to the in-app instructions as well.
- While I am actively developing/maintaining this app, I am not planning to make it open-source. However, if for some reason I'm unable to continue development at any time, for any reason, I will absolutely make it open-source/put the code somewhere publicly so that someone else can continue development, and I mean that sincerely.
- I am planning to add multi-language support in the future. This will be gradual over time, and I will absolutely need native speakers of these languages to test for me, because my only native language is English, and I will likely use AI for translations etc.
There is also a what's app group for beta testers, which you can join here.
Thank you all so much!!
Comments
Rocco
Hi Rocco.
Basically what happens is:
I type a word, generally a long word, like eight or more characters.
I swipe right, but there is no spoken confirmation of the word I typed. So I try swiping right again, but get a period.
If I swipe left to delete, there's no sign of that word, it deletes the previous word.
One other issue I just experienced while using the keyboard extension in whatsapp:
I successfully typed out a message.
I dismissed the keyboard using the three finger swipe down, and sent my message.
I selected the compose message text field to type out another message
.
While FloType did pop back up, I couldn't activate it and type. Even switching to the standard keyboard and back again didn't work.
Thanks again for all the work on this.
Dave
Additional
Hmm, regarding the issue in whatsapp above, it seems I had to turn direct touch on again.
How it would have got disabled I don't know. Its as likely to be an Apple issue as a FloType one though I suspect!
Question about permissions
I notice when the Flotype keyboard comes up that it indicates that the app requires "full permissions" in the Flotype settings.
when I activate that under Settings / lfowtype Apple indicates that this means anything you type might be sent to the developer and that one should be careful when typing passwords, account numbers, etc.
The app does seem to work with that setting turned off.
So the question is, what are we missing if that setting is turned off and what are the privacy concerns if that setting is turned on?
Thanks for any additional info.
--Pete
Re: FloType Full Access
Hi Pete,
thank you for bringing this up, because this is an important question and something I would like to clear up in general. When you see that message about enabling full access in the keyboard extension, you can press the learn more button to see an explanation of why the app asks for full access and what will stop working if full access is not enabled. Apples warning when you enable full access is rather extreme for most used cases. In principal, full access is the only way that Apple allows a main container app and it's accompanying keyboard extension to talk to one another. This means that if you turn full access off, the keyboard extension and app will be completely separate from each other. Your settings/customizations, dictionary entries etc. will not sync between the app and extension, all haptics will not work in the extension, text replacements will not work correctly,and you will also be unable to send me diagnostics/Bug reports if needed. If enabling full access really bothers someone, the only technical way around it would be to turn full access on, go into the main app, back to the extension to make sure your settings, dictionary etc. sink, then turn it back off again and know that until the next time it is turned back on, the extension and app will be separate from each other and not share settings etc. almost every third-party keyboard at this point requires that full access be enabled for various reasons, and these are just a few of them.
Really glad this is coming back, and long may it continue.
To be able to type at a reasonable speed and just note something down, fire off a message or an email or whatever you choose is one of those things which although can be done with other input methods, always took way to long even though I could manage it on a touch screen. Although my bluetooth keyboard does a great job, I always enjoyed being able to just tap out something on the keyboard like I am doing now. I am so grateful this is in development again. Keep up the good work.
Love This!
Hi,
Thank you so much for creating this. I really missed Fleksy/FlickType when they went away, and this really does feel like having the old experience back.
One question. When I first opened the app, I got the standard Apple prompt that the app was asking for local network access. There was no explanation for this apart from Apple's standard warning. What is the reason for this? I declined it since I can see no reason why it would need this and everything seems to be fine, but would be good to get clarification on why this was requested or if it's just a bug.
Apart from that though, fantastic work on the app and tutorial to go with it! Typing now feels like the good old days 😊
tutorial?
i didn't notice a tutorial just the info button is that what is being referred to? i will be joining the whatsapp group.
Thank you for this app will try it out more extensively over the weekend.