Tappy is a soft keyboard aimed at users of Android phones looking for a “large keys keyboard” solution for typing, and for those who want a similar Type-9 (T9) experience to typing on their old cellphone. Tappy offers a choice of layouts, easy-to-use emoji, GIF, and sticker functionality, and text prediction in over 30 languages and variations.

Tappy Keyboard is a product of Minibytes, and currently in development, with an early access version expected to be released in July 2022. In the meantime, follow me on Twitter to read the latest news, and to be notified of the release date.

Choice of five layouts

Type-9 (T9) — the most popular text prediction layout for “dumb” cellphones. T9 is often described as “like the keyboard on my old Nokia phone.” The T9 keyboard offers the biggest keyboard keys available on Tappy, and for many people a very short learning curve. However with three (or four) letters to a key, some words written in T9 can have many textonyms, and so text prediction can be less accurate.

Tappy-13 (T13) — unique to Tappy. T13 uses an additional four keys, with fewer letters to each key. The modified letter distribution results in fewer textonym clashes, allowing better text prediction, and so faster typing, at the expense of slightly narrower keys and a longer learning curve.

Tappy-13-TE (T13-TE) — also unique to Tappy. Offering the same benefits as T13, the thumbs edition rearranges the keyboard to place the keys used most often to the sides, where they are easier to reach with your thumbs, and provide improved mental and physical symmetry.

Compact Qwerty — often associated with Blackberry’s SureType, and sometimes referred to as T9+. Compact Qwerty is ideal for users looking for a big key keyboard, but who prefer the QWERTY layout over the ABC layout. With no more than two letters to a key, this layout has the same width keys as offered by T13, and the second fewest textonym clashes. Compact Qwertz and Compact Azerty are also available.

Qwerty — found on most desktop and laptop keyboards. Qwerty may be more familiar to some users, but offers the narrowest keys. However with only one letter to each key, Qwerty allows the most accurate text prediction of any of the keyboard layouts offered by Tappy. Qwertz and Azerty are also available.

Emojis, GIFs, stickers, and more

Tappy supports all emojis supported by your Android phone — that’s up to 3,633 emojis — organised into nine categories, and with search and history features. Tappy isn’t just another keyboard with emoji support added as an afterthought.

And if you love your GIFs and stickers, Tappy uses Giphy to give you access to all the GIFs, stickers, video clips, and text images, that you will ever need.

Text prediction

Improve your typing speed. Tappy currently contains dictionaries for over 30 languages and variations.

• Catalan
• Croatian
• Czech
• Danish
• Dutch
• English (AU/CA/GB/US)
• Estonian
• Finnish
• French (CH/FR)
• German (AT/CH/DE) ^*
• Icelandic
• Italian
• Irish

• Latvian
• Lithuanian
• Norwegian Bokmål ^†
• Norwegian Nynorsk
• Polish
• Portuguese (BR/PT)
• Romanian
• Scottish Gaelic
• Slovak
• Slovenian
• Spanish
• Swedish
• Welsh

* This product includes software developed by Geoff Kuenning and other unpaid contributors.
† Emoji search not available for Norwegian Bokmål.

Customization