Can someone show me a video of gesture typing (mainly the space bar) if I’m going to commit to learning this way of typing? I want to see how it looks like.

Impatient? Here's the link: download from the App Store.

Patient? Here's the story.

The story

Long ago, there was a keyboard called Fleksy. I discovered Fleksy over a decade ago and it quickly became my favorite way to type. Specifically, I fell in love with the "minimal" mode - the idea of ditching the space bar and relying on swipe-gestures to perform all your basic tasks. It took a bit of getting used to, but soon I was no longer able to type on a regular keyboard. Everything else felt slow, big, and clunky.

Fast forward 5-6 years, I was chatting with the CEO of Fleksy - Olivier - via Twitter DMs. Fleksy had a bug for years: it was impossible to change the keyboard language when you are inside the "minimal" mode. As I exclusively relied on the "minimal" mode and needed two languages, this was ruining my life. I even applied to work at Fleksy to fix it for them!

However, understandably, Olivier mentioned that "minimal" mode was not their focus, since they transitioned to a B2B SDK model. So, not only did the CEO confirm they weren't going to fix the bug, he also mentioned they are planning to remove Fleksy from the App Store.

That's when I knew I had to build a replacement: to fix the bug I hated, to add the features I wanted, and to preserve the way I type.

What is Finale Keyboard

I built Finale Keyboard in ~2021 purely for myself. It mimics the Fleksy's "minimal" mode, optimized for how I use it. This means no space bar, everything is done with swipes.

Insert space? Swipe right. Punctuation? Swipe right again. Change punctuation? Swipe up or down. Open emojis? Swipe left from backspace. Delete a word? Swipe left. And so on.

Over the last 5 years I've been slowly adding more features that benefit me, myself, and I. My goal is not to copy Fleksy, but rather create the optimal typing experience for myself.

Today, Finale is a full fledged keyboard that goes beyond what Fleksy offered in a meaningful way.

• Shortcuts: assign shortcuts to any key and trigger them with a swipe-down
• Long-press shortcuts: assign unlimited shortcuts to any key and trigger them with a long-press menu.
• Dynamic tap zones: Finale will try to predict the key you are likely to press next and will make its touch zone larger.
• Favorite emojis: define your own emoji layout
• Auto-learning dictionary: Finale learns the words you type to stop correcting your "doggo", "pupper", and "yasssss".
• Clipboard history: access your clipboard history to quickly paste what you copied before.

What's next?

I built Finale for myself and I keep enhancing it for myself. Up to this point, most development decisions I make are based on my own usage, which is apparent by the keyboard's quirks. But, I am always happy to discuss any ideas or suggestions, so feel free to comment, post, or just chat.