Tapling - Type with Bongo Cat
Meet Tapling - a small companion that lives in your keyboard’s suggestion bar and taps along while you type. Type normally and Tapling quietly keeps you company.
What Tapling Does?
Tapling is a small companion that lives in your keyboard’s suggestion bar and taps along while you type. As you type you earn keycaps that can unlock items like furs, hats, and faces for your Tapling.
The idea is simple. Type normally and Tapling quietly keeps you company. Every keystroke counts.
The Story Behind Tapling
The idea started when Tapling’s creator Benno came across the Bongo Cat typing companion game on Steam.
I liked the idea of a small companion reacting while you type and slowly collecting cosmetics. It turns everyday typing into a small cozy experience.
Since the game is made for desktop computers, and primarily Windows, Benno started wondering how something similar could exist on the iPhone. Since most people always have their phone with them, the keyboard felt like the natural place for a companion like this.
Tapling is the result. It’s a small character that lives in the keyboard’s suggestion bar and taps along quietly while you type. It’s present whenever you type, but never interrupts what you’re doing.
Building the Keyboard
Since Apple doesn’t let you add UI elements like Tapling to the system keyboard, the only option is to build a full custom keyboard extension.
That means recreating many features users expect from a normal keyboard such as layouts, gestures, autocomplete, and autocorrect.KeyboardKit provided the foundation for this.
I used KeyboardKit as the base and extended it with the features I needed. This made it possible to focus on the Tapling experience instead of rebuilding keyboard fundamentals.
Instead of starting from a blank canvas, KeyboardKit provided the base structure needed to build a custom keyboard with SwiftUI, and to let Benno focus on what makes his keyboard unique.
Give it a try
Download Tapling from the App Store to experience what it’s like to type with a cute companion keeping you company.
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