The Apple Watch is ideally suited for reading notifications, but writing a response is a completely different story. The Shift Keyboard app comes with a solution: a full keyboard that you can quickly tap a message on.
Shift Keyboard brings keyboard to the Watch
Apple is convinced that dictating a message with your voice is the best option on your Apple Watch, but speaking out loud to your watch in public is not yet well-established for many.
Developer Adam Foot devised the new Shift Keyboard app for that target group. This watchOS app brings a full keyboard to the small screen of your Apple Watch, and it works surprisingly well.
There are, however, a few things to keep in mind. For example, the keyboard does not support the Dutch dictionary, so you will not get Dutch word suggestions. You also need at least watchOS 6 to run the app.
It is therefore better to disable this word suggestion function in the settings. You can also only send messages in the Messages app with Shift, which makes responding to a notification from WhatsApp, Facebook or other chat app impossible.
Surprisingly good for short messages
When setting up, you have two choices: Full and Precise. Precise magnifies the keys, but in doing so means that you have to scroll with the Watch’s Digital Crown to use the full keyboard. That is very inconvenient in practice, so we quickly switched to the Full keyboard.
This makes the letters a lot smoother, but while typing we make surprisingly few typos. We don’t recommend typing long paragraphs on your wrist, but for a quick response of a few words, Shift Keyboard is certainly suitable.
If a future update added support for the Dutch dictionary, the app would work even better. For now, it’s a surprisingly useful app for people who use iMessage regularly and are looking for an app to respond quickly from the Watch.
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