Google has a lot of apps on the iOS platform. One of the most popular of these applications is the company’s Keyboard Gboard, for the iOS platform. And now Google is further augmenting its usefulness by introducing voice transcription to it. So iOS users who are partial to the Gboard as opposed to their iPhone’s native keyboard application, can speak and have stuff typed.
Google has pushed an update to the Gboard early today, that is bringing voice typing to the application. You can activate it by holding down the microphone button on your space-bar for a couple of seconds. However, make sure that you update the Gboard application to the latest version first.
The update was a long time coming and many had even given up hope that the Gboard app would receive it at all. Why? Well, Apple doesn’t like it when third party keyboards (or Gboard for that matter) attempt to access the microphone and indeed, does not allow it at all. So, the Gboard is pretty much the only keyboard apart from Apple’s native keyboard that has voice transcription. So how did Google manage it though?
Well, the Gboard, we are talking about the keyboard here, has a parent Gboard app. So, while installing the Gboard from the App Store, you are technically not installing a mere keyboard but are getting an app.
What Google’s new update does, is that it sends you across to the Gboard parent app for when you want to use the voice recognition feature. The whole feature is pretty much seamless except for a new screen that slides in — sent from the Gboard application — when you want to access the voice transcription service.
Along with voice transcription, the update also brings support for a bunch of new languages, that takes the total number of languages up to 15. Also included, are a bunch of all new emojis that were made available with the iOS 10 OS.
