At a glance
| Flikzi | SwiftKey | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free; Pro US$4.99 once (before tax), after a 14-day trial of everything | Free; its Google Play listing is marked “Contains ads” |
| Internet permission | None, so it cannot send what you type anywhere | Yes. Used for the account, backup and sync, Copilot and other online services. |
| Account | None | Optional Microsoft account |
| Backup and sync | No. What Flikzi learns stays on the phone and is not backed up | Optional: your learned words and typing model are saved to your own OneDrive |
| AI writing tools | No | Copilot in the keyboard: ask questions, rewrite text in another tone, compose drafts, create images |
| Layout | QWERTY on a honeycomb of hexagon keys with no gaps, in rows of 10, 9 and 7; no shift key and no backspace key | QWERTY and many regional layouts, with shift and backspace keys |
| Capitals | Flick a letter up; flick up on the right of the space bar to step a whole word to Capital or ALL CAPS; automatic at sentence starts | Shift key |
| Deleting | Swipe the space bar left to delete and right to bring back; keep holding to keep going | Backspace key |
| Moving the cursor | Hold the space bar, then slide | Hold the space bar, then slide (a setting if you use several languages) |
| Autocorrect and suggestions | Reads where each tap landed. Your letters stay as typed until you press space; delete straight after to get them back | Yes, with predictions that adapt to your writing |
| Learning | Your words, which word follows which, your email addresses and where your thumbs land, on the phone only | On your phone; synced through your account if you turn on Backup & Sync |
| Glide typing | Yes: slide over a word’s letters, one word per glide (a switch in settings) | Yes (swipe to type) |
| Voice typing | With Pro: Android’s on-device recogniser (Android 12 and later); the sound stays on the phone | Yes (voice to text) |
| Clipboard history | With Pro: the last 20 things you copied, kept for an hour unless you pin them | Yes; an optional Cloud Clipboard shares your last copied text with Windows |
| One-handed mode | Yes, to the left or right, on phones | Yes, and a floating keyboard |
| Themes | Light, dark or follow the phone, and five accent colours; no picture themes | More than 100 themes, or your own photo as the background |
| Emoji | Panel, search, suggestions and skin tones; no GIFs or stickers | Emoji, GIFs and stickers, with search |
| Languages | 23, including Chinese, Japanese and Korean; one free, all of them with Pro | More than 700, up to five at once, all free |
| Foldables and tablets | Splits in two, with 6 or 9 word choices as hexagons between the halves (Pro) | Thumb (split) mode and a tablet layout |
SwiftKey details checked on 13 November 2026 from Microsoft’s own pages and the sources below.
Privacy and data
Microsoft says that unless you opt in to a SwiftKey account, all personal and language data SwiftKey generates is stored on your device and is never transferred. If you turn on Backup & Sync, SwiftKey saves your personalised dictionary and typing model to a folder in your own OneDrive, where you can view and delete them.
SwiftKey's Google Play data-safety label lists optional collection of device IDs for advertising or marketing and personalisation, and of location for app functionality and advertising or marketing. The listing is marked “Contains ads”.
A 2022 master's dissertation at Trinity College Dublin recorded SwiftKey sending usage telemetry tied to the Google Advertising ID, with no way to opt out. It did not see the typed text itself being sent. That was in 2022, and SwiftKey may have changed since.
Flikzi has no account and no sync, because your typing never leaves your phone. That is a limit as well as a promise: if you change phones, what Flikzi learned and your settings do not follow you. Flikzi has no internet permission, which Android requires for any network access, so it cannot send what you type anywhere. Its two optional permissions, Microphone for voice typing and Contacts for your contacts’ email addresses, stay off until you turn those features on. You can see both on your own phone in Settings, Apps, Flikzi, Permissions.
Typing
SwiftKey and Flikzi are both QWERTY keyboards: the letters are in the same places and you tap one key per letter. SwiftKey has a shift key for capitals, a backspace key for deleting and a symbols layer for digits and marks. Flikzi does those jobs with flicks and swipes. Flick a letter up for its capital and down for the digit or mark drawn under it. Swipe the space bar left to delete and right to bring letters back; keep holding after the swipe and it keeps going, faster the longer you hold. Hold the space bar, then slide, to move the cursor.
Flikzi’s keys are hexagons on a honeycomb with no gaps, so every touch goes to the nearest key. Its autocorrect reads where each tap landed and allows for a neighbouring key, a missed letter, an extra tap or swapped letters. Your letters stay as typed until you press space. If a correction is wrong, delete straight after and your own letters come back.
The flicks take a few minutes to learn. Try every gesture in your browser before you decide.
Choose SwiftKey if
- You want your dictionary and typing style backed up and synced between devices.
- You type in a language outside Flikzi’s 23, or in more than one and want them all free.
- You want Copilot, GIFs, stickers or photo themes in the keyboard.
- You would rather keep a shift key and a backspace key than learn flicks.
Choose Flikzi if
- You want your typing kept on your phone, with no account and no ads.
- You like flicks: capitals, digits and marks come from the letter keys, and deleting is a swipe on the space bar.
- You want voice typing where the sound stays on the phone (Android 12 and later).
- You type in Flikzi’s 23 languages and, with Pro, switch between them with one flick.
- You use a foldable or tablet and want the word choices between the halves (Pro).
Switching from SwiftKey
Install Flikzi from Google Play, turn it on in Settings, and choose it as your keyboard. You can keep SwiftKey installed and switch back from the keyboard switcher.
The letters are where SwiftKey has them, so your fingers already know the way. What changes is around them: there is no shift key and no backspace key, so give the flicks a few minutes.
Your SwiftKey typing model does not carry over. Flikzi starts from its own built-in dictionary and learns your words as you type.
Sources
- Google Play: Microsoft SwiftKey AI Keyboard (features, languages, “Contains ads”)
- Google Play: SwiftKey data safety
- Microsoft: SwiftKey privacy questions and your data
- Microsoft: SwiftKey backup and sync with OneDrive
- Microsoft: How to change your keyboard mode on SwiftKey
- Microsoft: Cursor control on SwiftKey
- Microsoft: Copy and paste between SwiftKey and Windows (Cloud Clipboard)
- Trinity College Dublin dissertation (2022): How Private Are Android Keyboards?