How to type pinyin in Flikzi
- Switch to Chinese: flick up on the left of the space bar. The space bar shows 简体中文 for Simplified or 繁體中文 for Traditional. With more languages switched on, flick up and hold for a picker. (Switching between languages is part of Flikzi Pro; the free version types the one language you pick in settings, and Chinese can be it.)
- Type the pinyin without tones, one letter at a time, on the QWERTY keys: nihao. Type v for ü, as in nv and lv. The pinyin shows in your text while you type.
- Pick a candidate from the strip above the keys. It holds candidates for everything you typed and words for the start of it. Tap one to commit it: 你好. Space commits the first one.
- Or type the shorthand: the first letter of each syllable. Type z, then g, and the strip offers 这个 (zhège); z, c and s also stand for zh, ch and sh.
- Choose in parts if you like: pick 你 first, and the strip moves on to candidates for hao.
- Carry on: after you commit, Flikzi predicts the characters likely to come next.
Punctuation switches to full-width forms in Chinese (，。！？). Press Enter to commit the letters themselves instead of a candidate. Where two syllables could run together, put an apostrophe between them with a flick down on c: xi’an. To delete a letter, swipe left on the space bar.
Each tap types the key it lands on. The autocorrect that fixes rough typing in English and the other word languages does not apply to pinyin.
Pinyin on a foldable or tablet
When the keyboard splits, the hexagons between the two halves show how your letters read as syllables, and the characters stay in the strip above. Type zg and the gap shows z’g. Where the letters can split two ways, as xian can (xian or xi’an), the gap offers each reading: tap one to fix your letters to it, and swipe left on the space bar straight after to take that back. Swipe sideways across the gap for more readings. The split keyboard is part of Flikzi Pro. Flikzi on foldables.
Readings Flikzi remembers
Flikzi remembers the readings you pick, on your phone. A reading you tapped in the gap comes first the next time you type the same letters. So does the reading of a word you picked from the strip: choose 西安 for xian and xi’an leads next time. The more you use first-letter shorthand, the sooner Flikzi reads your letters as shorthand. Forget learned words in settings clears all of it.
English words among the candidates
Bilingual typing doesn’t need a switch for every English word. In Chinese, English words that match the letters you typed appear among the candidates, one in every few. When the letters can’t be pinyin at all, such as hi, the English word comes first and space commits it. Two settings control this: English words in Chinese and Japanese, on from the start, and Space around English words, off from the start, which puts a space between an English word and the Chinese around it.
Why offline pinyin matters
Many popular Chinese keyboards send what you type to a server to find better candidates. That is only as safe as the connection. In April 2024 the Citizen Lab tested cloud-based pinyin keyboards from nine vendors and found that eight had flaws that could let someone watching the network read the keystrokes. A year earlier it had found a similar problem in Sogou Input Method, since fixed.
Flikzi never sends your typing to a server for cloud candidates. The dictionary and the engine are inside the app, and nothing you type leaves your phone. How Flikzi’s privacy works.
What’s supported
- Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese (as written in Taiwan), both typed in full pinyin on the QWERTY keys. Choose 繁體中文 in settings for Traditional; its characters are converted from the Simplified ones.
- Sentence and word candidates, partial choosing, first-letter shorthand (z g for 这个), and predictions after each commit.
- On foldables and tablets, the readings of your letters between the split halves, to pick and page through.
- Readings you picked before, remembered on your phone.
- Full-width punctuation in Chinese.
- Switching languages with a single flick, mid-sentence, as often as you need.
- English words among the pinyin candidates, for mixed-language messages.
Not supported today: zhuyin (bopomofo), Cangjie, stroke input, handwriting and double pinyin (shuangpin). Flikzi also types Japanese, Korean and 19 other languages.
The engine
Flikzi’s pinyin support is built on the Android Open Source Project’s PinyinIME decoder and its dictionary, released under the Apache License 2.0 and adapted to run inside Flikzi. Traditional characters come from OpenCC’s conversion tables, also Apache 2.0. Open-source licences.