FunKeyboard logo FunKeyboard
In testing
Tour & user guide - v0.2.0, in testing

A keyboard you design yourself, that cannot send what you type.

FunKeyboard puts your own photo behind the keys, stickers on them, stars bursting out of them and a piano in them, with autocorrect and swipe typing underneath. A keyboard sees everything you type, so this one has no internet permission at all - not restricted, not unused: absent. This page is the whole product: a five-stop tour, then a reference for the details, including everything it does not do.

Coming soon to Google Play Android 8.0+ · 1-day free trial, then ₹199 once
Internet permission
None at all
Ready-made themes
8
Offline dictionary
88,000 words
Accounts
None needed
The tour

Five stops, from a plain phone to a keyboard nobody else has.

Work through these five and you have seen how FunKeyboard fits together.

1Setup

Turn it on

Two steps, both in Android's own screens.

  • Step 1 opens Android's keyboard settings, where you switch FunKeyboard on.
  • Android warns that a keyboard can collect what you type. It shows that for every keyboard you add, and the app explains why this one cannot send it anywhere.
  • Step 2 opens Android's keyboard list, where you choose FunKeyboard.
  • The app then has a box to try it in, right on the home screen.
2Themes

Pick a theme

Eight complete looks, one tap each.

  • Cloud, Strawberry, Bakery, Pond, Winter, Sunset, Galaxy and Midnight.
  • Each one sets the colours and the keycap font, and most add a sticker, a typing effect and a matching key sound.
  • The change is immediate. The next time the keyboard opens, it wears the new theme.
3DIY

Design your own

Six tabs, with the real keyboard underneath.

  • Backgrounds - your own photo or one of ten gradients, then key and letter colours.
  • Icons - stickers in the corners of the keys. They sit beside the letter, so every key stays readable.
  • Fonts - nine keycap fonts, from Pacifico to Bangers.
  • Effects - hearts, stars, bows, snow, confetti, petals, fruit, bubbles or fire, bursting from the key you press.
  • Sounds and Size - seven generated key sounds with a volume slider, plus keyboard height and letter size.
  • The preview is the keyboard itself, not a picture of it. Nothing changes until you tap Save.
4Stylish text

Type in style

Text that stays styled wherever you paste it.

  • The Aa button above the keys offers ten styles: Script, Bold, Italic, Gothic, Outline, Sans, Mono, Bubble, Wide and Small Caps.
  • It is not a font. Each letter is swapped for a Unicode look-alike, so the style goes with the text into any app that can show those characters.
  • It switches itself off in password, email, web address and number fields, and the strip says so.
5Typing

Everyday typing

The working keyboard underneath the fun.

  • Autocorrect and suggestions work from a dictionary on the phone. Backspace straight after a fix undoes it.
  • Swipe typing: slide across the letters to type a word, and the other likely words appear above the keys.
  • Long press a letter for accents, or $ for ₹. Slide on the space bar to move the cursor, and slide left from backspace to delete whole words.
  • Full emoji with search and skin tones, plus clipboard history and stickers.
!

English only, and no voice typing. If you type in Hindi or dictate your messages, keep your current keyboard as well. Android lets you switch between keyboards at any time - see what it does not do.

The guide

Reference, by topic.

Everything from the tour in more detail, plus what a keyboard owes you in writing: what it can see, what it keeps, and what it leaves out.

Getting started

First run

Android makes you turn a new keyboard on yourself, in two places. The home screen walks you through both.

1. Turn it on
Tap Open keyboard settings and switch FunKeyboard on. Android shows its standard warning that keyboards can collect what you type; here is what this one actually does.
2. Switch to it
Back in the app, tap Choose keyboard and pick FunKeyboard from Android's list.
3. Try it
Tap Try your keyboard here on the home screen and type a few words.
4. Make it yours
Tap a theme, or Design your own keyboard to start the DIY editor.

What it sees and keeps

Honest

Every keyboard sees what you type, because typing is how text gets into the app in front of you. What matters is what it does next.

What it does

  • Passes your text to the app you are typing in
  • Reads the word you are typing and the text before the cursor, to correct, suggest and know when a capital is due
  • Learns single words and word pairs on the phone, so suggestions improve. Settings can turn this off or forget them
  • Keeps what you copy for one hour, unless you pin it. Settings can turn this off or clear it
  • Keeps your theme, settings, recent emoji and background photo on the phone

What it does not do

  • Keep your messages or a log of your typing
  • Learn from, suggest in or swipe in password fields
  • Keep copies an app marks as sensitive, or anything copied in a password field
  • Send anything anywhere - it has no internet permission
  • Ask for storage, contacts, microphone, camera or location
  • Copy itself to a Google account - Android's automatic backup is off for this app
i

No internet permission at all. Not "unused" or "restricted" - the app does not hold it. That also means no ads, no analytics and no crash reports, because none of them can reach anywhere. Android itself refuses any network connection from an app without this permission. The purchase goes through the Google Play app on your phone, which is why it needs no internet permission here.

Themes

One tap
Cloud
Soft lilac and white, the system font and a plain click. The default.
Strawberry
Pink, Comic Neue, strawberry stickers, hearts and a pop.
Bakery
Warm cream, Lobster, cake stickers, bows and a bell.
Pond
Green, Nerko One, frog stickers, bubbles and a water drop.
Winter
Icy blue, Mountains of Christmas, snow and a bell.
Sunset
Orange into pink, Pacifico, flower stickers, petals and a piano.
Galaxy
Deep purple, Bangers, star stickers, stars and a drum.
Midnight
Near-black, the system font, fire and a typewriter.

The DIY editor

Six tabs

Changes stay in a draft until you tap Save, and the live keyboard below the tabs shows the draft as you go.

Backgrounds
My photo or one of ten gradients, then eight key colours and seven letter colours.
Icons
Butterfly, Bow, Strawberry, Cake, Flower, Star, Heart, Frog, Cat or a Mix, in the corner of every fifth letter key. They are emoji, so they look the way your phone draws emoji.
Fonts
System, Lobster, Pacifico, Bangers, Comic Neue, Mountains of Christmas, Irish Grover, Henny Penny or Nerko One. These change how the keys look, not the text you type. For that, see stylish text.
Effects
Nine effects that burst from the key you press, then fall and fade. The number on screen is capped, so fast typing stays smooth.
Sounds
Click, Pop, Piano, Typewriter, Drum, Bell, Water drop or None, with a volume slider. The app makes these sounds itself. They stay quiet when the phone is on silent or vibrate, unless you turn on Play sounds on silent in Settings.
Size
Keyboard height from 70 to 130 percent, letter size from 70 to 140 percent. The keyboard never takes more than 55 percent of the screen.
One design at a time
Saving replaces your previous design, and so does picking a ready-made theme. There is no library of saved designs, so a design you are fond of is lost if you switch away from it.

Your own photo

Private
Choosing it
The photo comes through Android's own picker, so the app sees only the one picture you choose. It needs no permission to read your gallery.
What is kept
A copy, scaled down to 1600 pixels on its longest side, in the app's private storage. Your original is not touched.
Clearing it
Copies you tried and did not save are removed. So is the saved copy when you move to a gradient or a ready-made theme. Uninstalling removes everything.
Android version
Works on Android 8.0 and later. Android 8 support is new in version 0.2.0 and is still being tested.

Stylish text

Unicode

The clever part of stylish text is also its limit: these are not ordinary letters that happen to look nice, they are different characters.

The ten styles
Script, Bold, Italic, Gothic, Outline, Sans, Mono, Bubble, Wide and Small Caps. Pick Normal to go back. Your choice stays until you change it.
Why it survives pasting
The app you are typing in receives the look-alike characters themselves, so they stay styled in a chat, a bio or a caption.
Numbers and accents
Every style changes digits except Small Caps. Script, Italic and Gothic use bold digits, because Unicode has no digits of their own. Accented letters keep their accent. Small Caps leaves capitals as they are, and punctuation is never changed.
Switched off for you
Password, email, web address and number fields always get plain text, because swapped letters would silently break them. The row above the keys reads "Stylish text is off for this field".
Where it can go wrong
An app may show some characters as empty boxes, though styles your phone cannot draw at all are hidden. Searching for the plain word will not find the styled one, and screen readers may read it badly or not at all. Use it for decoration, not for anything people need to find or read aloud.

Smart typing

Offline

Everything here runs on the phone, from a list of about 88,000 English words and what the app has learned about you.

Suggestions
Up to three words above the keys, updating as you type. Tap one to use it. After a space, it guesses your next word. Those guesses start out general and improve as it learns.
Autocorrect
Fixes a word when you end it with a space or punctuation, in apps that allow correction. When a fix is waiting, your own spelling stays first in the row, with the fix in bold beside it.
Undoing a fix
Press backspace straight after a fix to get your word back. It then stays that way from now on.
Swipe typing
Slide your finger across the letters without lifting. The word appears with a space added for you, and the runners-up sit above the keys. One backspace removes the whole word.
Learning
Words you keep using stop being corrected and start being suggested. See what it keeps.
Where it switches off
Password, email, web address and number fields, and any field that asks keyboards not to suggest.

Keys & emoji

Typing
Layout
English QWERTY with a permanent number row. Two pages of symbols sit behind ?123, and number fields open on symbols by themselves.
Long press
Hold a letter for its accents, such as é or ñ, then slide to the one you want. Hold $ for ₹, €, £ and more, or hold the full stop for other punctuation.
Space bar
Slide along it to move the cursor. Hold it for Android's keyboard list. Tap it twice to end a sentence with a full stop.
Shift
One tap for one capital, a double tap to lock, one more to release. Capitals at the start of a sentence come on automatically where the app allows it.
Backspace
Hold to repeat. Slide left from it to select whole words, then lift to delete them, or slide back to cancel. It removes a whole emoji at a time, including the long family-style ones.
Enter
Reads Go, Search, Send, Next or Done when the app asks for that, and does that action.
Emoji
The 😊 key opens the full Unicode list in nine groups, without any your phone cannot draw. 🔍 searches by name using the keys, 🕘 shows recent emoji, and a long press on people and hands picks a skin tone, which the app remembers. ABC goes back.
Landscape
The keyboard stays themed sideways. It does not switch to Android's plain full-screen text box.

Clipboard & stickers

Extras
Clipboard
The 📋 button opens Select all, Copy, Cut and Paste, with what you copied recently below. Tap an item to paste it, pin one to keep it, or remove it. Unpinned items go after one hour.
What is skipped
Copies an app marks as sensitive, anything copied while you are in a password field, and very long text.
Stickers
The 🖼️ tab in the emoji panel sends a large cut-out emoji as a real image, in apps that accept images from keyboards. Other apps say so. They are drawn on your phone, so they look like your phone's emoji.
Password managers
On Android 11 and later, a password manager that supports it can show its choices above the keys.

Settings

Your choice

Tap Settings on the app's home screen.

Typing
Autocorrect, word suggestions, learn my words, automatic capitals, full stop on double space and swipe typing, each on or off. Forget learned words clears what it has learned.
Clipboard
Clipboard history on or off, and Clear clipboard history. Pinned items stay until you remove them.
Key sounds
Play sounds on silent plays key sounds at media volume, even on silent or vibrate.
Vibration
Off, Phone default, or Custom with a strength slider.

Switching keyboards

No lock-in
Between keyboards
Tap the 🌐 key when Android shows it, or use the keyboard button in the navigation bar. Which of these appears depends on the phone.
Going back for good
Choose your old keyboard in Android's keyboard settings. Uninstalling FunKeyboard also hands you back to another keyboard.

What it does not do

Honest

The list a keyboard's store page usually leaves out.

It does

  • Look the way you want it to
  • Correct, suggest and swipe in English
  • Give accented letters on a long press
  • Keep clipboard history
  • Stylish text that survives pasting
  • Work with no internet, no account and no ads

It does not

  • Type other languages or layouts, including Hindi
  • Do voice typing
  • Offer GIF search, which would need the internet
  • Sync your words or designs to another phone
  • Keep more than one custom design

What it costs

One payment

FunKeyboard is free to install, with one free day, then a single payment. These prices apply once it reaches Google Play.

1-day free trial
Use all of it for a day, counted from the first time you use the keyboard.
Then one payment
₹199 in India, as a single purchase through Google Play. The price differs by country. No subscription, no ads and no tiers.
After the trial
When the day is up, the keyboard stops typing and gives you two choices: unlock it, or switch to another keyboard.
The trial clock
With no server, the clock lives on the phone. Reinstalling the app restarts it.
Restoring a purchase
The app checks with Google Play by itself, or you can tap Restore purchase on its home screen. Once unlocked, it keeps working offline.
Without internet access
The purchase runs through the Google Play app on your phone, so FunKeyboard itself still holds no internet permission.

Options reference

Quick lookup
WhereOptionWhat it does
HomeThemesApplies one of eight ready-made looks straight away
HomeTry your keyboard hereA box to type in without leaving the app
DIYBackgroundsMy photo or ten gradients, eight key colours, seven letter colours
DIYIconsTen sticker choices, or None
DIYFontsNine keycap fonts. Change the keys, not your text
DIYEffectsNine typing effects, or None
DIYSoundsSeven key sounds or None, volume 0 to 100
DIYKeyboard sizeHeight, 70 to 130 percent
DIYLetter sizeKeycap label size, 70 to 140 percent
KeyboardAa buttonNormal or one of ten stylish text styles
Keyboard📋 buttonText tools and clipboard history
Keyboard😊 keyEmoji, emoji search and stickers
SettingsTypingAutocorrect, suggestions, learning, capitals, double space, swipe
SettingsClipboardClipboard history on or off, and clear it
SettingsSounds and vibrationSounds on silent, and vibration off, default or custom

Frequently asked

Expectations

Android warned me that a keyboard can collect what I type. Should I worry?

Android shows that warning for every keyboard you did not get with the phone. FunKeyboard does see what you type, as any keyboard must. It keeps no messages or typing log, only learned words and word pairs on the phone, which you can turn off. It holds no internet permission, so it has no way to send anything off the phone.

Does FunKeyboard have word suggestions, autocorrect or swipe typing?

Yes, all three, in English, and they work offline. It also has long-press accents and clipboard history. It has no voice typing and no other languages. See smart typing.

Is stylish text a font?

No. Each letter is swapped for a different Unicode character, which is why the style survives being pasted into another app. Those characters are not ordinary letters, so a search may not find them, a screen reader may read them oddly, and some apps may show them as boxes.

Is stylish text used in password fields?

No. It switches itself off in password, email, web address and number fields, because swapped letters would break the input. The row above the keys says so.

Will the key sounds play when my phone is on silent?

Not by default. They play only when the ringer is on, unless you turn on Play sounds on silent in Settings.

Are the characters on the keyboard from cartoons or games?

No. Stickers and effects are your phone's own emoji, the sounds are generated by the app, and the fonts are openly licensed.

Is FunKeyboard on Google Play?

Not publicly yet. Version 0.2.0 is in testing, and this page will link to the listing on the day it is published.

What does it cost?

It is free to install, with one free day, then one payment of ₹199 in India through Google Play. When the free day ends, the keyboard stops typing until you buy it or switch to another keyboard. There is no subscription and there are no ads - see what it costs.

Status

In testing
v0.2.0
Added autocorrect, suggestions, swipe typing, long-press accents, cursor and word-delete slides, clipboard history, stickers, full emoji with search and skin tones, Settings, and the free day with one-time unlock.
v0.1.0
The first build. Eight themes, the six-tab DIY editor, ten stylish text styles, an emoji panel and a setup guide.
Known limitations
A design you have saved is replaced when you pick a ready-made theme. Next-word guesses start out general until the app has learned how you write.
Status
In testing, and coming to Google Play. The screens on this page come from the older v0.1.0 test build, so some details differ. Licences for the fonts and word data ship with the app.