Free at last, iPhone users, your keyboards are free at last. Just a day after the release of iOS 8, which for the first time allowed support for third-party keyboards on iOS, it looks like iPhone users have been installing popular keyboard apps such as Swype and SwiftKey in droves.
LEARN MORE: These are the best third-party keyboards for iOS 8 on the App Store
Right now, Swype occupies the No. 1 spot on the iOS paid apps download chart while SwiftKey is slotted at the No. 1 position in the free apps download chart. In fact, SwiftKey announced on Thursday that it’s been downloaded by iPhone users more than 1 million times in just 24 hours, a remarkable number for an app that’s only available for users who have downloaded iOS 8. What’s more, third-party keyboard app Fleksy, which has staked its claim as the fastest smartphone keyboard in the world, has rocketed up to become the No. 2 paid app in the App Store.
What does this tell us? Mainly that opening up the iOS keyboard to third-party apps was a very good and very long overdue move on Apple’s part. While iOS 8 added a ton of great new features, the fact that iPhone users are flocking first to the keyboard apps seems to show there was significant pent-up demand for the kinds of keyboards Android users have been using for years now.
