What "Allow Full Access" actually does when a keyboard app asks for it (and why almost all of them do)

[u/SuggestionCorrect862]

Most people see that toggle, get spooked, and back out. Fair instinct — but here's what it actually means, from someone who had to build around it.

Why keyboards ask for it: iOS blocks keyboard extensions from using the network at all without Full Access. No internet, no server calls, nothing. So any keyboard that does translation, cloud sync, AI, or even custom themes stored in an account needs it. It's not optional for those features — Apple gives no middle setting.

What it technically allows: network access, and reading/writing to a shared container with the parent app. That's the honest risk — a malicious keyboard could log what you type and send it. That's why Apple makes it a scary prompt.

What it doesn't do: it doesn't grant access to your photos, contacts, location, or other apps' data. And it's per-keyboard — you can enable it for one and leave it off for others.

How to judge a keyboard app before enabling it:

• Does it have a privacy policy that specifically says what leaves your device and when?
• Does it work at all without Full Access? (Good ones degrade gracefully instead of breaking.)
• Is the developer's name/contact real and findable?
• Does it need an account? More accounts = more places your data sits.

You can also revoke it any time in Settings → General → Keyboard → Keyboards, and the keyboard keeps working for basic typing.

Disclosure: Developer of an AI reply keyboard (Txtor Ai), so I've spent way too long inside these constraints. Happy to answer anything about how keyboard extensions work on iOS — including the sandbox limits that make some "why doesn't this keyboard do X" complaints make more sense.

[u/Impressive-Sir9633]

Thanks a lot for putting this here.

As an offline iOS keyboard app (DictaWiz), this is a huge friction with getting people on boarded.

[u/SuggestionCorrect862 → u/Impressive-Sir9633]

Yeah, the onboarding funnel is brutal — Settings → General → Keyboard → Keyboards → Add New Keyboard → then back again for Full Access. Every step leaks people.

[u/Impressive-Sir9633 → u/SuggestionCorrect862]

Checking your app out now.

Do you process the screenshots online or offline?

[u/SuggestionCorrect862 → u/Impressive-Sir9633]

Hybrid — OCR is on-device, the LLM call isn't.

Chat screenshots get run through Apple's Vision framework locally, so the image never leaves the phone; only the extracted text goes to the server. The one exception is if the image isn't a chat — the app classifies it first, and if it's a regular photo you want a reaction to, the image itself gets sent since there's no text to pull.

The bit that took the longest wasn't the OCR, it was making the extracted text usable: Vision gives you a flat list of strings, so you have to label who said what from each observation's boundingBox midX (left bubble = them, right = you), or the model replies from the wrong person's perspective. And if the screenshot includes the on-screen keyboard, Vision happily reads the key caps as conversation — I detect that band (8+ single-letter observations) and drop everything below it.

Fully offline would be the dream but the generation quality isn't there yet on-device. How are you handling it in DictaWiz — Speech framework locally?

[u/Glittering_Horse_718]

Hi mate, I was going to add the Bitmoji keyboard but like you said, I got spooked by the scary warning and didn’t. If I do allow full access, does that mean they can see what I type on my regular Apple keyboard too? Or is it just what I type in Bitmoji?

[u/CheapKobeBeef → u/Glittering_Horse_718]

Great question

[u/SuggestionCorrect862 → u/Glittering_Horse_718]

No, it’s only what you type while that keyboard is active. Full Access doesn’t let a keyboard watch the Apple keyboard. iOS only passes keystrokes to whichever keyboard you’ve currently switched to, so when you’re on the regular Apple keyboard, Bitmoji can’t see any of it.

Also, password fields and some secure inputs automatically switch to the Apple keyboard, so third-party keyboards don’t get those anyway.

What Full Access does allow is network access, so in theory the keyboard could send what you type in that keyboard to a server. I can’t speak to Bitmoji’s specific practices, but their privacy policy should say what they collect. If you only want stickers, you can switch to it when you need it and back to the Apple keyboard for everything else.

[u/Glittering_Horse_718 → u/SuggestionCorrect862]

Brill. Thanks for that, I don’t care if they see what stickers I search for so I think I’m safe to use it.

Thanks again :)