Hello,
I have been trying out the Japanese Swiping Keyboard for a few days and have learned all the little tricks so far, but I’m still quite confused as to how to change to katakana. The predictive text above my keyboard shows a katakana version of what I typed, but just writing katakana on purpose seems not to be an option for me. I am using swiftkey. Before you ask, removing the emoticon key will just leave an empty spot, nothing is put there instead of it.
Isn’t that normal?
I didn’t know Swiftkey supports Japanese. I need to try it.
Well, I don’t find Japanese on my Swiftkey. How did you install that? Android or iOS?
It could be, I have no clue. My thought process was that the 12 input was based on a phone’s keypad, and I assume they didn’t have predictive text back then. But if predictive text is how to make katakana now, then I’ll just keep using that.
Go to settings, languages and turn on Japanese. There you can choose between a romaji and kana keyboard
You can switch between keyboards by Swiping the spacebar
I’ve been using the built in Android swiping keyboard for quite some time and the only way to use katakana is also with predictive text. Maybe a katakana-keyboard-only function isn’t the standard in Japan?
When I go that list, there’s some 20-30 languages (maybe more, didn’t count), but no Japanese. I’m on iOS if that makes difference.
SwiftKey works like that for katakana. It’s the same for the romaji layout too. Maybe other keyboard apps are different, but I don’t really have experience with other apps.
Actually, text prediction did exist in the era of non-smart phones, it was called T9 
I don’t have Swiftkey, but on iOS, simply go to the standard keyboard settings, you can add Japanese keyboards there. You can choose between romaji and kana keyboard, with romaji being the standard English layout and kana the 12-input one.
It’s all the way to the bottom, not at J in the alphabetical list
Not on my phone. On the list after Z-languages there’s couple cyrillic languages and couple which I assume are arabic.
So you have Android then?
Yes, but I’m not sure how that would matter. I’ve had a romaji Japanese keyboard on Swiftkey for years now. I can’t imagine why iOS wouldn’t have Japanese installed
Because many apps are different for Android and iOS, that’s why I kept asking.
I’d be curious to hear if someone else with iOS has Japanese though. I have actually lot of languages, like 100+, but no Japanese. Sounds strange.
I just downloaded Swiftkey to check, and it doesn’t have Japanese or Chinese or even Korean for me.
I guess you have to install it natively if you want to use the かな keyboard 
Well iphone has it own kana-keyboard, but would have been interesting to try that swipe version.
I know the apps are of course different, it’s just that I’m baffled that while the android version has had Japanese for many years, the iPhone version doesn’t. You’d expect them to both have that function.
But iOS has this same flick kana keyboard natively (and I think it looks better). Why do you want specifically the swiftkey version?
I thought the swiftkey version would support swiping like it does on English. I don’t know since I never got to try it.
