Standalone textastic-style keyboard

10 years ago • updated by 3 years ago • 6 • 1 duplicate

Textastic keyboard is awesome. It's fast, accurate and complete at the same time; a must-have for everyone trying to write code con an ipad.

I (and I hope other users too) would really appreciate a "standalone" ios8 textastic keyboard. It will be useful in soo many other apps: ssh, latex writing, interpreters like pythonista, or just to write some code on a forum or email.

I will gladly pay 2-3 € for something like that :)

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9 years ago

i signed up just to agree with this.

9 years ago

I'm so suprised no one has released a keyboard that is code friendly.

please! I'd pay $6 for sure. a trackpad button in the middle to control moving the cursor and a double tap on the pad to select text and expand selection.

ok, i confess, the joystick idea is in WriteApp but a Textastic keeyboard would be sick.

8 years ago

please do this!!

I have my dev account and will do it for you if you give me the code for the keyboard. This would be my default keyboard if it existed!

7 years ago

I came here to request the very same before finding this post.

My original suggestion on the iOS Store app review:

Please add support for a native iOS keyboard
Man where to start... there are sooooo many things I love about Textastic I don't know where to begin...
Just try it, you won't regret it 👍🏻
@Developer(s) please make my dream come true to have the ability to use your wonderful keyboard extension outside of app as a native iOS keyboard as I'm completely in love with its functionality as a power user.

Under review

7 years ago

Hello, thanks a lot for your review, I really appreciate it!

The additional row of keys in Textastic is just that: an additional row above the native iOS keyboard. Third party keyboards on iOS generally replace the whole keyboard. I cannot just add my own buttons to the standard keyboard. Obviously, recreating the behavior of the native keyboard is a lot of work, and a few features are not even possible to replicate.

On iOS 11, it will be possible to swipe down all keys on the native keyboard to enter special keys which might make Textastic's keyboard obsolete anyway.

3 years ago

I’d like to return to this discussion - I would still gladly pay for the Textastic keyboard as a standalone Keyboard App.

It’s been 3 years, and we're all the way up to iOS 14 - there is still no developer keyboard as good as the one you developed for Textastic. I often find myself opening your app to type something, only to copy-paste it into another.

Various other iOS keyboards are out there, many of which do not conform to the base keyboard size - some are even larger than the Textastic keyboard (attached). The larger kb doesn't intrude on the design/experience in anything I use, and the extra row would be a welcome addition to many apps.

There are many generic keyboard templates available, so mimicing the full behavior of the iOS keyboard won't take the same haul as developing from scratch. Here is one of the more popular templates:

https://github.com/KeyboardKit/KeyboardKit

I sincerely hope you consider developing a standalone keyboard. One-touch access to numbers and punctuation is literally twice as productive as the current 2-or-3 tap that most other keyboards offer. I'd personally pay $15 for this as a standalone, but I imagine many folks would pay the normal $3 for a premium keyboard.

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