KeyboardKit 7.3
KeyboardKit 7.3 is out, with many new features. Say hello to dictation support, theme collections, theme variations…and more.
Dictation support
KeyboardKit 7.3 adds dictation support, which has been a feature long in the making. It’s an early version that is not yet thoroughly tested, but your feedback regarding its design and performance is very important to ensure it’s on the right path.
Just like with autocomplete, KeyboardKit adds a bunch of protocols and state that describe how to implement dictation, after which KeyboardKit Pro adds implementations to some license tiers that just makes it work automatically after registering a pro license.
Unlike other featuers, keyboard dictation requires a couple of steps to setup, and since it depends on deep links and shared data, the demo apps will not be able to demo this. Dictation will instead be added to the upcoming App Store app, so that you will be able to try it out without having to implement it in your app.
Appearance and theme changes
KeyboardKit 7.3 adds a bunch of new themes and style variations to the pre-defined themes. This makes it easy to tweak certain parts of a theme, such as the tint color of the standard theme.
The KeyboardTheme type and all the various styles are now Codable, which means that you can easily persist and share themes. This however comes with some unfortunate breaking changes.
See the release notes for more info about these breaking changes and how they may affect you.
New themes
KeyboardKit 7.3 adds a bunch of new themes and lays the foundation for a theme library that can be extended in the future.
You can view a full list of themes here. Note that you need a Gold license to use themes.
Standard
The .standard theme mimics a native keyboard. It now supports a discrete tint color variation:
Swifty
The .swifty theme removes the borders of the system keys. It also supports a discrete tint color:
Minimal
The .minimal theme removes the borders of all the keys. It supports extensive styling:
Candy
The .candy theme applies smooth button corners and lets you define pastel color themes:
Neon
The .neon theme also has smooth button corners but uses a darker color scheme:
Tron
The .tron theme uses a single tint color to create a futuristic look, for instance:
Conclusion
KeyboardKit 7.3 brings dictation support to KeyboardKit and adds a bunch of power to the theme enine. There are also many smaller additions, improvements and bug fixes. For a complete list of changes, see the release notes and please share any feedback you may have.
Discussion
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