How Google Is Bringing Handwriting Back for Your Smartphone
Do you ever wish you could just write a note to someone rather than texting it out tap by tap on your smartphone? Well now you can, kind of. Google has released a Handwriting Input option that lets you write out a word (or emoji) on your phone or tablet, and then it understands whatever word you write.
You can write in print or cursive and the Handwriting Input can read 80 languages, including 20 various dialects, which really comes in handy if you speak an ideographic language like Chinese. Keyboards in Chinese can be hard to understand and even harder to use, but writing out your own characters makes it way easier. And you can use the keyboard on any app that brings up your keyboard, from your email to Facebook Chat to just searching around the web.
You don’t need a stylus or anything to use this fancy keyboard — just your finger. Although, if you’re working on a phone any smaller than an iPhone 6, you may find it’s tight quarters. We tested it out, and it actually works better than you’d expect, no matter how messy your handwriting.
Right now, you can only run this Google app from an Android phone. You can download it for free right here.
What’s your favorite keyboard to type (or write) on? We want to hear about it in the comments!