iOS 8: third-party Mandarin pinyin keyboards?

[etm001]

Hi all,

 

iOS 8 has only been available for two days now, but I'm already eagerly awaiting new third-party Mandarin/pinyin keyboards - I never thought the stock Mandarin/pinyin keyboard was particularly great.

 

If you come across a new and/or particularly good Mandarin/pinyin keyboard, please post a reply to this thread so that everyone else will be aware.

 

P.S. At the moment, SwiftKey is the most popular third-party keyboard in the App Store, but it doesn't support Mandarin input (and hasn't for years, despite many people requesting it).

 

 

 

 

[Wurstmann]

I like the one from sogou: http://shouji.sogou.com/

[etm001]

 

 

I like the one from sogou: http://shouji.sogou.com/

Some how I overlooked this one when searching the App Store. Thanks for pointing it out.

 

For anyone who reads/writes traditional characters: this keyboard can output traditional characters. Here's how to enable the functionality:

• Download the keyboard and add it as a new keyboard (Settings > General > Keyboards)
• In any application (it doesn't matter which one), bring up the keyboard as if you were going to type. At the top of the keyboard there will be a row of icons. Tap the one that looks like a gear (i.e., settings). 
• In the resulting screen, tap the first icon in the top row, farthest to the left. This will switch the output to traditional Chinese.

Note: although you can switch the output to traditional Chinese, the characters used within the app itself remain simplified.

[gato]

百度输入法 seems pretty good so far. I've been waiting to use 双拼 on iOS forever.

[etm001]

I've been playing with the Sogou keyboard for a little while now, and there's only two things I can't figure out:

 

• Is there any way to hide the top row of icons ("S", emoji, keyboard selection, settings)?
• Does this keyboard have a handwriting mode? I can't seem to find it.

[etm001]

 

 

百度输入法 seems pretty good so far. I've been waiting to use 双拼 on iOS forever.

I downloaded it and selected to enable traditional Chinese in the settings (if you haven't guessed, I don't read/write simplified very well), but the keyboard is still outputting simplified characters. I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong or if it's a bug. Would you mind enabling that setting for a moment and confirming whether the keyboard outputs traditional characters?

[gato]

It seems fine at entering traditional Chinese for me. You turned on 繁体输入 under settings?

[etm001]

 

 

You turned on 繁体输入 under settings? 

Yeah that's the setting I turned on. After turning it on, I went into an app and typed 繁體輸入, and in the text prediction bar 繁体输入 was output. Strange.

 

On an unrelated note: for both Sogou and Baidu, I did not enable the "Full Access" in iOS keyboard settings (I'm not paranoid but I am cautious about this setting). As far as I can tell, text prediction still seems to work (i.e., it's generated locally on the device), so what am I missing out on by disabling this?

[gato]

Try turning it on. I have it on.

[etm001]

 

 

Try turning it on. I have it on. 

I turned on Full Access for Baidu, and after doing so it output traditional characters. I'm not quite sure why you have to enable Full Access for that functionality to work, though.

 

One thing I've noticed is that enabling/disabling Full Access (FA) is buggy right now in iOS. I turned it on for Sogou but it didn't recognize that FA was enabled until after I restarted my phone. Which then caused SwiftKey to think that FA had been disabled.

 

For the Baidu keyboard, is it possible to disable the "disappearing stroke" functionality when handwriting? And also is it possible to slow down the handwriting reconizer? I prefer to keep the strokes I've written on the screen, and since my handwriting is slow, the recognizer often thinks I've started a new character when in fact I'm still writing the first one, etc.