I’ve been using WK for a while on Android and currently my use-flow goes like this:
Meaning: Switch to GBoard and swipe-type in english.
Reading: Switch to GBoard-Japanese OR Arte Japanese keyboard and 12Key type in Japanese.
I really like the functionality of the Arte keyboard where you can type voiced kana with one gesture instead of multiple button presses, but I don’t like having to switch back and forth which itself requires multiple button presses and kinda’ defeats the purpose.
So my question is: Does anyone know of a way to just fast-flip between two keyboards without multiple button presses? Or even better some way to automatically switch between keyboards depending on the input expected in WK?
Also curious if anyone knows of other keyboards like Arte that don’t require a subscription.
I went into the GBoard settings and turned off “Show language switch key”.
This changes the language switch to the bottom of the screen instead of on the keyboard. I can then tap this button (see picture) to flip between keyboards without multiple button presses.
Oddly enough I tried turning off the language key just now but the button didn’t appear on the Android control bar (not sure what it’s called). I can turn on a button in that location for keyboard switching with a different setting… that works well enough but it brings up a popup list of keyboards I need to select from instead of just switching between the two I want.
Sorry I know I’m getting pretty nitpicky with my workflow here, but since I’m switching multiple hundreds of times every day I’m trying to just streamline as much as possible.
Completely understand the desire to streamline. I had a similar frustration until I found the shortcut I mentioned. I’m sad to hear that it doesn’t work for you in the same way. For me, if I tap it (not hold it), it just cycles between the keyboards I have enabled. Admittedly, I only use GBoard, so maybe that has something to do with it
I hope you find something that works for your workflow
The closest thing I would check is if there are any automation apps that can automate these tasks for you, mapped to some button or whatever instead of having to manually go through the steps. I don’t think android by default is really designed for your workflow.
I looked a little bit at automation apps and that’s probably not a bad idea. It’s annoying to setup but at the least I could have a dedicated switch-keyboards button on-screen with a little work.
From what I could tell there’s no way (with any of the apps I looked at) to detect and auto-switch between keyboards which is too bad because that would really be the best outcome.
Yeah, that’s unlikely to happen sadly. I know smouldering durtles has an option to indiciate to the keyboard itself that it should switch languages (which works nicely if you are switching from one gboard keyboard to another gboard keyboard), but that only works within one keyboard app.
