Rookie question here - how do I type in katakana on Android? I’m not referring to on Wanikani, i’m aware that caps=katakana on the site. I have a “flick” japanese keyboard installed but I can’t swap from hiragana to katakana unless it appears in the suggestions(?) - which isn’t 100% of the time. Is there anyway to go from ら to ラ for instance, without scrolling through a bunch of word suggestions?
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My keyboard always gives me katakana within the first “page” of suggestions, the ones that appear directly above the keyboard without having to scroll. I tried a bunch of single kana, as well as real words and gibberish strings. Can you give me an example of a hiragana string that doesn’t do that for you so I can try it on mine?
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I’ve been using a keyboard where I type out the romaji. the keyboard you use, how do you get to the other characters? Do you see them if you hold down?
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It’s basically tap and swipe. Left for ～い, up for ～う, right for ～え, and down for ～お. The や and わ keys behave a little differently (for example, ん and ー are on the わ key; 「 and 」 are on the や key), but the principle is the same.
It’s why you’ll see it referred to as a “swipe keyboard”.
(Of course, you can also just tap multiple times to get successive vowels, but swiping is faster.)
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Interesting. I’ll have to check it out
There is no such thing on gboard, but the conversion to katakana should always be among the suggestions given by the 変換 key on the right.
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I think it does usually come up with the カタカナ suggestion, at least for the names/words I just tried. I was just thinking there should be another way. Sounds like there isn’t for the keyboard I have installed though. There might be an option on other keyboards to swap to katakana.
My keyboard
Well, that looks more like autocomplete rather than conversion suggestions…
My Android doesn’t have a conversion button somehow, but as Leebo mentioned, katakana results usually appear on the first page, if they’re relevant 
I’m honestly not sure if your question’s been answered, but just in case, 2000kanji has already given the solution (although you’ll have to look a bit). The 変換 button they refer to is on the bottom left on the default keyboard, and pressing it twice (once for 変換, next for 英数カナ) pretty much guarantees katakana results, as far as I know.
As an example:
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Yeah sorry, I’ve been busy then I forgot to revisit this. My question is answered, there isn’t a swap-to-katakana button on my keyboard. As you say it should be somewhere in the “suggestions” (or whatever we want to call them).
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Another problem related to this is the dash (as in コーヒー). I have to tip twice on the key marked ‘あa1’ to get the numerical keyboard where I have a minus sign. こ-ひ- is then transformed to コーヒー. Is there an easier way to get a ー on this type of keyboard?
Yes, it is there on mine, too. And I thought I had looked everywhere 
Thanks!
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