Guide

Setting up, and every gesture

FloType is a keyboard, so it lives inside the apps you already use. Here is how to install it, switch to it, and drive it.

Installing FloType

Join the beta. Open the TestFlight invitation on your iPhone and install FloType. You will need Apple's TestFlight app, which is free.
Open the FloType app once. This creates its settings and lets you try the keyboard in a practice field before you turn it loose in other apps.
Add the keyboard. Go to Settings → General → Keyboard → Keyboards → Add New Keyboard, and choose FloType.
Turn on Allow Full Access. Still in that list, tap FloType and switch on Allow Full Access. FloType requires it, and the note below explains what it does and does not mean.
Switch to it. In any text field, switch keyboards the way you normally would — the globe key, or a three-finger swipe up from inside FloType to move to your next keyboard.

Why Allow Full Access?

iOS sandboxes keyboards by default, and without Full Access it blocks the APIs FloType is built on: all haptic feedback, every setting you configured in the FloType app (the keyboard would fall back to defaults each session), and the sync of your personal dictionary and word model between the app and the keyboard.

Rather than let those fail silently, FloType does not open without it. If Full Access is off, the keyboard shows a prompt with a button straight to Settings instead. What Full Access does not do is give the keyboard a license to harvest your typing — what FloType sends is set out plainly on the Privacy page.

The basics

Learn these four and you can type. Everything after this section is optional.

Tap the letters: Tap anywhere in the keyboard area, approximately where the letters would be on a QWERTY keyboard. Do not try to be accurate — FloType works out the word from the pattern.
Swipe right: Enters the word, with the space added for you.
Swipe up or down: Cycles through the other word suggestions before you commit.
Swipe left: Deletes the last word. Swipe left and hold to clear everything from the cursor back to the start of your text, leaving anything after the cursor in place. Keep holding a moment longer and the rest of the field goes too. The Gestures settings decide how far the hold goes. If you didn't mean it, swipe left with three fingers to undo.
Swipe left mid-word: If you have made a mistake while tapping, swiping left before you swipe right clears your taps so you can start the word again. You can do this any time before committing.

Punctuation, emoji and numbers

Swipe right after a word: Opens punctuation, starting at a period. Swipe down to cycle through the rest — comma, question mark, exclamation mark, colon, semicolon, 's. Under Settings → Punctuation the list is yours: reorder it, drop what you never use, or add marks the keyboard does not otherwise offer, such as ° or …. The period is always first.
Swipe up from punctuation: Moves into emoji. Predictive emojis, on by default, suggests emoji based on what you just typed and offers them before your own list from Settings → Emojis.
Numbers key: Sits in the bottom-left corner of the letters keyboard. Touch and hold to find it, then lift to switch into your chosen number or symbol mode.
Swipe right and hold: Inserts a new line.

Manual entry

When you need a word FloType does not recognize — a name, an unusual spelling — type it manually and add it to your personal dictionary so it is recognized from then on.

Touch and hold: Anywhere in the keyboard, to enter manual entry mode. As in standard iOS touch typing, you hear the letter currently under your finger and lift when you find the one you want. Keep building the word this way, then swipe right when it is complete.
Swipe up / swipe down (mid-word): Capitalizes or lowercases the last letter you entered. Set Manual swipe up and down to Accent characters under Settings → Gestures and they cycle that letter's accents instead — e to é to è. Either way, swipe right to finish the letter; after that, up and down cycle word suggestions.
Swipe up after entering a word: Adds it to your personal dictionary — or removes it, if you added it by mistake. Once a word is in your dictionary you can tap-type it normally and it will appear as a suggestion.

Hybrid words

You can mix manual entry and tap typing inside a single word. If FloType keeps missing a word, or it is simply hard for you to tap, manually enter the first letter or two and then tap out the rest. Manually type ap, tap out PLE, swipe right, and "apple" should come up as a suggestion.

The top row: numbers and Quick Keys

While in manual entry, slide your finger to the very top of the keyboard to reach a floating row — either numbers or Quick Keys, depending on your setting. Quick Keys are common symbols and shortcuts such as an exclamation mark, @, .com and $, so you can insert one without switching the whole keyboard. Each symbol shown is the first in its category; lift on a column to insert it.

Two-finger tap and hold: Swaps the row to the digits 1 through 0 plus hyphen. It stays swapped until your next swipe right, then snaps back on its own — so you can type a phone number or address without leaving QWERTY. Tap and hold again to swap back sooner. If you would rather the swap stick, turn on Keep swapped row until switched back under Keyboard Behavior → Quick Keys.
Swipe up or down on a column: Right after touching it, cycles through that column's alternates.

The Quick Keys row sits at the top of Keypad mode as well, where no number row is needed because the keypad has its own digits below. Use the Default top row setting under Keyboard Behavior to choose which appears by default; the Quick Keys strip can also be hidden entirely.

Shift, delete and return

In manual entry on the letters keyboard there are a few keys that tap typing doesn't use: shift at the left end of the bottom letter row, delete at the right end of that row, the numbers key in the bottom-left corner, and return in the bottom-right corner. Like Quick Keys, you reach them by touching and holding, and lift on one to use it. A quick tap there is ordinary tap typing.

Shift: Works like the iOS keyboard. It's selected automatically at the start of a sentence: at the very start, after a new line, or after a period, question mark or exclamation mark. Lift on it to change that for the next letter. Turning it off makes the next letter lowercase, and turning it on mid-sentence makes it a capital. FloType says "selected, shift" when it turns on. Shift only changes capitals.
Delete: Removes one character at a time, like the iOS keyboard. Swiping left from anywhere still deletes a whole word.
Return: Starts a new line, the same as swiping right and holding.

Universal gestures

These work any time you are inside FloType's keyboard area.

Two-finger single tap: Cycles keyboard modes.
Two-finger tap and hold: In letters mode, swaps the floating top row between digits and Quick Keys for one entry — or until you swap it back, with "Keep swapped row" on.
Two-finger hold and twist: The rotor. Changes what the cursor moves by — characters, words, or lines — just like VoiceOver's own rotor. With more than one typing language on, the rotor also has Language. Its default increment is the Rotor setting under Accessibility.
Two-finger swipe left or right: Moves the cursor by the current rotor amount — one word by default. With the rotor on Language, it switches to the previous or next typing language instead.
Two-finger swipe up: Copies the entire text field to the clipboard.
Two-finger swipe down: Pastes from the clipboard into the text field.
Two-finger swipe up or down and hold: Switches typing language, up for the next and down for the previous, once you've turned on more than one under Settings → Languages. FloType says the language's name. A quick two-finger swipe up or down still copies or pastes.
Three-finger single tap: Turns shift on or off, capitalizing the next letter you type. Letters mode only.
Three-finger tap and hold: Turns caps lock on or off. Letters mode only.
Three-finger swipe down: Dismisses the keyboard.
Three-finger swipe up: In the FloType app, opens Settings. In the keyboard extension, switches to your next keyboard.
Three-finger swipe left: Undo. This is iOS's own undo, so it takes back your last change in the text field, and FloType announces it.
Three-finger swipe right: Redo.
Clearing the field: Swipe left and hold (see The basics), or swipe left, hold, then come back right and hold, which always clears the whole field. Turn on Confirm before clearing under Keyboard Behavior if you'd like to be asked before a whole-field clear.
Four-finger single tap: Reads the entire text field aloud.
Four-finger tap and hold: Spells the last word you typed, letter by letter. Works on demand whether or not "Spell words after typing" is switched on. If the cursor is on punctuation or an emoji, there are no letters to spell, so it goes back to the last real word. Spell gesture falls back to, under Settings → Gestures, can read the whole field instead. If you spell more often than you read back, the Four-finger tap setting under Settings → Gestures swaps the two.
Swipe right and hold: Inserts a new line.

A one-finger swipe left always deletes the last word by default. Turn on Swipe left deletes by rotor unit under Settings → Accessibility → Rotor and it follows the rotor instead — a character, a word, or back to the start of the line.

Typing in Spanish

FloType types in English and Spanish. Turn on the languages you want under Settings → Languages. Each one keeps its own word list and learns your words separately.

Everything the keyboard says follows the language you're typing in. In Spanish, ¿ and ¡ sit in the punctuation list in place of 's, and the next word attaches to them. Emoji suggestions and emoji names are in Spanish too. If your iPhone is set to Spanish, the app's built-in guide is in Spanish as well.

Two-finger swipe up or down and hold: Switches to the next or previous language. FloType says the language's name.
The rotor, set to Language: Two-finger swipe left or right to move between languages.

Keypad mode

A telephone-style numeric pad, with the Quick Keys row across the top.

Tap a digit, period or number sign: Inserts it — either by tapping approximately where you think the key is, or by holding and lifting for manual entry.
Swipe left: Deletes one character at a time. Swipe left and hold to clear everything back to the start of your text, or the whole field, as set under Gestures.
Touch and hold the bottom-left key: Lift to return to letters. A two-finger single tap also switches modes.

Numbers and symbols mode

This mirrors the standard iOS numbers and symbols layout. It works in manual entry only, so a stray tap cannot insert a symbol by accident.

Touch and hold any key: Hear it, then lift to insert it.
Swipe left: Deletes one character at a time. Swipe left and hold to clear everything back to the start of your text, or the whole field, as set under Gestures.
Bottom-left key: Returns to letters.
The key just above it: Switches between the numbers and symbols pages, as on the standard iOS keyboard.
Spacebar: Hidden by default, because FloType auto-spaces between words when you swipe right. The Spacebar setting under Keyboard Behavior brings it back: Manual entry only shows it in QWERTY manual entry and here, while Manual entry and tap typing also lets a single tap on it finish the word you are on and add a space, the same as swiping right.

On Apple Watch

The Watch app comes with the iPhone app and installs on your paired watch by itself. It is built for light typing — a quick reply, a search, a note to yourself — rather than editing: there is no cursor to move, no copy and paste, and no way to work back through text you have already entered.

watchOS only ever hands an app one finger at a time, so none of the two-, three- or four-finger gestures above exist there. The one-finger ones you already know all work.

Tap, then swipe right: Types and enters a word exactly as on iPhone. Swipe up or down to cycle suggestions, swipe left to delete the last word.
Swipe and hold: Left clears everything; right inserts a new line.
Touch and hold: Manual entry, exactly as on iPhone.
The numbers key: Switches between letters and the keypad. It is in the bottom-left corner, and the same corner switches back.
Swipe right after a word, then up: Punctuation, then emoji. Your emoji list, sounds and volumes come from your iPhone — open FloType on the phone once and the watch picks them up.
Touch and hold the text line: Shares what you have typed. With VoiceOver, the text line also carries a "Share" action in the rotor. On Series 9 and later, the Double Tap hand gesture reads your text back — or shares it, if you prefer. Note that watchOS switches Double Tap off entirely while VoiceOver Hand Gestures, AssistiveTouch or Quick Actions are on.
The gear beside the text line: The watch's own settings: sounds, haptics, keyboard height, what Double Tap does, and Copy and Clear on Exit.

Apps on watchOS have no access to the clipboard, so FloType hands your text to your phone instead. With Copy and Clear on Exit on — it is by default — leaving the watch app puts what you typed on your iPhone's clipboard and clears the watch; open FloType on the phone and it is ready to paste. Simply lowering your wrist does not count as leaving, so your draft survives.

Something not behaving?

FloType is in active beta, so some of it will be rough. Bug reports are genuinely useful — the more specific, the better.

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