Two of some of the most popular keyboard jailbreak tweaks for iOS 7 that are available in Cydia known as AltKeyboard 2 and SwipeSelection Pro will be coming to the App Store for iOS 8. iOS 8 officially supports the installation of third-party keyboard software on iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad – they are offered through the App Store. Many keyboards are already available, and yesterday, we walked you through how to install one.
AltKeyboard 2
The Ałtweaks iOS jailbreak development team is behind the creation of AltKeyboard 2, which was originally designed by Sentry_NC and coded by ac3xx (James Long). The software allows the user to add three major new functions to the iOS 7 keyboard, including the ability to access alternate characters on a single keyboard view, invoke text-editing options like select, cut, copy, and paste with the use of swipe gestures, and even pan the cursor around in a body of text by making use of special grabbers on the sides of the keyboard.
AltKeyboard 2 will be released in the App Store by The Appical, a new company that is overseen by Sentry and his partner, mescalineeyes (Lorand Koncz). The Twitter account for his company has already been teasing images of the upcoming keyboard for iOS 8:
In addition, in the second screenshot next to the AKB (AltKeyboard) icon, you can see something orange that says "Snip."
As it turns out, The Appical will be releasing a total of four brand-new keyboards in the iOS 8 App Store. AltKeyboard is one of them, and another one is called Snippet Keys (that's the orange icon you see above). We've also been informed that out of the other two keyboards, one will be a companion for a GIF application that the company is working on, and the other will be a custom keyboard creator platform where users can customize their keyboard theme with colors, size, corner radius, key shadows, and more. Specific details about the three keyboards apart from AltKeyboard are still under wraps for now, but we will have the scoop closer to release.
As we can also tell, the company is taking very detailed care to make their software look great, even on the iPhone 6 Plus:
SwipeSelection Pro
Kyle Howells' SwipeSelection Pro is another third-party keyboard that was a huge hit in the jailbreak community that will soon be submitted to the iOS 8 App Store. It's an ingenious keyboard extension that makes it easier to swipe through words and characters in a body of text, highlight text from that body of text, and perform additional options. Simply swiping one way or the other over the entire keyboard pans the cursor around in the body of text, while swiping from the Shift key on either side of the keyboard while swiping allows you to select text. From there, you can do any text-editing that you need to do without the cumbersome tap-and-hold for the magnifying glass mechanism that Apple implements with iOS in its stock, out-of-the-box form.
Howells tells us that he will first be releasing his keyboard in English, and will work to update the keyboard with additional languages after the initial release. He is currently in mid-development of the keyboard application at this point in time, but he notes that he will be trying to keep the keyboard as close to standard as possible, while implementing the new features. This way, the keyboard will still feel like you're using Apple's keyboard, although it will have more functionality.
Howells has created a Twitter account called SwipeSelection that he will be using to update his target audience on the progress of SwipeSelection for the iOS 8 App Store.
While we don't currently have any information on release dates for any of these keyboards to become available in the iOS App Store, we think it's awesome that Apple has finally opened up the ability to have our own keyboards in iOS, and that is' even more awesome that some of our favorite jailbreak tweaks are about to be released as legitimate applications in the iOS App Store without the need to even jailbreak your device.
In the mean time, if you're jailbroken and on iOS 7, you can download SwipeSelection Pro from Cydia's BigBoss repository for $1.99, and you can download AltKeyboard 2 from Cydia's BigBoss repository for $2.99.
We're sure that once iOS 8 is jailbroken, the jailbreak community will find even more ways to improve on the iOS 8 operating system. So far, we've heard that the Pangu jailbreak tweak is working on the jailbreak for iOS 8, but there is no ETA of when it could be available, so stay tuned for more!
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