The board
The keys are hexagons laid out like a honeycomb, with no gaps between them. Each row sits half a key further in than the one above.
- The letters are in their QWERTY rows of ten, nine and seven. Each has a digit or a mark drawn under it: that is what a flick down types.
- At the ends of the middle row:
?123(numbers and symbols) left of a and emoji (☺) right of l, each half a key. - Beside the bottom letters: the comma left of z; the full stop right of m, then Enter.
- The space bar runs under the letters, outlined in amber. It shows the language you’re typing in. Its left half and its right half take different flicks, as you’ll see below.
- The clipboard keys stand at the two ends of the space bar, with Flikzi Pro. Without Pro the space bar takes the full width.
- The strip above the keys shows words to choose from. The Flikzi mark at its left end opens the settings; the mic at its right end is voice typing, with Flikzi Pro.
Words: tap the letters, roughly
Tap the letters of your word. You don’t have to hit each one exactly. Flikzi reads where every tap landed and weighs the keys around it, so a tap between o and p counts for both, and the words before decide. It also allows for a missed letter, an extra tap and two letters swapped.
Your letters go into the text just as you typed them. The strip leads with the word that space will use: the word Flikzi thinks you meant when it is sure, and your own letters when it isn’t. Space, a full stop, a comma or Enter takes that word. Type tomorow and space gives you tomorrow.
- A missed space is put back: thequick and space gives the quick.
- The word before is respelled when the next word shows what it was: well be becomes we’ll be, its going becomes it’s going. In Vietnamese this is how a word gets its tones.
When it changes a word you meant
- Delete straight after (swipe left on the space bar): your own letters come back, and Flikzi leaves them alone when you go on.
- Or tap your letters in the strip before you press space.
- A word you insist on this way becomes one of your words, and it isn’t corrected next time.
- To stop all corrections, turn off Autocorrect in Flikzi’s settings. The suggestions stay.
The strip also finishes longer words, and after a space it offers an emoji for the word you typed and likely next words. Tap any of them to use it; Flikzi adds the space for you. Put the cursor at the end of an earlier word and you can go on typing it.
Glide typing
You can also slide instead of tapping. Put your finger on a word’s first letter, slide over the others in order and lift on the last. A line follows your finger, the strip shows the word so far, and the word is typed when you lift. You can mix the two: tap one word, glide the next.
- Spaces come by themselves. The next word, glided or tapped, gets a space before it. A comma or full stop goes straight after the word.
- The wrong word? Tap the right one in the strip, or swipe the space bar left to take the whole word away.
- Flicks still work. A glide starts only when your finger moves sideways into another key. A stroke up or down is a flick, even a slanted one.
- Some short words are tapped: one-letter words, and words whose two keys sit one above the other, such as see and ok. That stroke is a flick.
- One glide is one word. On a split keyboard each half reads glides over its own keys, so a word with letters on both halves is tapped.
- Where: every language typed by its words, and one-handed mode. Not Chinese, Japanese or Korean, and not password fields.
- Off: the Glide typing switch in Flikzi’s settings, under Typing.
Learning, on your phone only
Flikzi learns the words you type, so your own words and names come first next time, and which word you type after which, so your own phrases come up as suggestions. It learns where your thumbs tend to land on each key, as a few numbers per key. And it remembers the whole email addresses you type: start one and the strip offers the rest. All of it stays on your phone and is never uploaded; Forget learned words in settings clears it. Password fields get no suggestions, no corrections and no learning: there, each tap types its letter and a flick up its capital.
Capitals: flick up
Flikzi has no shift key. Flick a letter up and you get its capital, anywhere in a word: flick p up in the middle of iPhone, or u, s and a for USA. Sentences start with a capital on their own, and words like I and Monday get theirs from the dictionary.
To change the case of a whole word, use the right half of the space bar. Flick it up (it shows Aa) and the word steps up one case: lower to Capital, Capital to ALL CAPS. Flick it down to step back. It works on the word you’re typing, on selected text, or on the word just before the cursor. At the start of a sentence, or with no word before the cursor, the flick sets the case of the next word you type.
For a run of capitals, flick the right half up and hold. ALL CAPS stays on: the keys show capitals and Aa on the bar becomes AA. Flick the same place down to switch it off.
Digits and marks: flick down
Flick a letter down for the digit or mark drawn under it. The top row gives the digits, as the number row on a computer keyboard does. You never have to leave the letters for a phone number or a question mark.
| Top row | q | w | e | r | t | y | u | i | o | p |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flick down | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 0 |
| Middle row | a | s | d | f | g | h | j | k | l |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flick down | @ | # | $ | _ | & | - | + | ( | ) |
| Bottom row | z | x | c | v | b | n | m |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flick down | * | " | ' | : | / | ! | ? |
Contractions such as don’t, I’m and it’s get their apostrophe from the dictionary, so you don’t need the flick for them. Use it for names like O’Brien. Comma and full stop have their own key left of z.
Accents: hold
Hold a letter and a strip of its accents opens above it. Slide to one and let go to type exactly that letter. In a language with letters of its own, the strip offers those: ä ö ü ß in German, ё in Russian, ґ in Ukrainian. In English and the other languages without, it offers the common accents in the table below. You usually don’t need this, because accents come with the words: type francais in French and space gives you français.
| Key | Hold to reach (in English) |
|---|---|
| a | à á â ä ã å ā æ ą |
| c | ç ć č |
| d | đ |
| e | è é ê ë ē ę |
| g | ğ |
| i | ì í î ï ī ı |
| l | ł |
| n | ñ ń |
| o | ò ó ô ö õ ø ō œ |
| s | ß ś š ş |
| u | ù ú û ü ū |
| y | ý ÿ |
| z | ž ź ż |
Numbers and symbols
- Flick a letter down for its digit or mark, without leaving the letters.
- Tap ?123, the half key left of a, for the number keys. The digits and marks are in the same places as on the letters’ flicks, so there is one arrangement to remember. Number and phone fields open here.
- Flick a number key up or down for the rarer symbol drawn above or below it: 5 up gives %, $ up gives €, ( down gives {.
- Tap the space bar afterwards and you’re back on letters.
| Number key | Flick up | Flick down |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | ~ | – |
| 2 | ` | – |
| 3 | | | – |
| 4 | \ | – |
| 5 | % | – |
| 6 | ^ | – |
| 7 | < | – |
| 8 | > | – |
| 9 | « | – |
| 0 | » | – |
| @ | § | ¶ |
| # | £ | ¥ |
| $ | € | ¢ |
| _ | — | – |
| & | ° | – |
| - | – | – |
| + | = | ± |
| ( | [ | { |
| ) | ] | } |
| * | × | ÷ |
| " | “ | ” |
| ' | · | – |
| : | ; | … |
| / | • | – |
| ! | ¡ | – |
| ? | ¿ | – |
Deleting without a delete key
Deleting is done on the space bar, from one letter to a whole line.
Swipe the space bar: one letter
Swipe left on the space bar: one letter goes. Swipe right and it comes back. Restoring brings back only what you deleted since you last typed.
Keep holding: keep going
After the swipe, keep your finger down. Flikzi keeps deleting, faster the longer you hold, straight past the ends of words. Turn back and it switches to restoring, so you can stop exactly where you want.
Moving the cursor
Hold the space bar until it buzzes, then slide. Left and right move the cursor through the text; up and down move it across lines. Lift your finger when it is where you want it. A swipe that starts at once still deletes, so the two don’t get mixed up. Moving the cursor.
Switching language, hiding the keyboard
The left half of the space bar does both. Flick it up to go to the next of your languages, in turn through all of them. Flick it up and keep holding, and a picker opens with every language you have switched on in settings: slide to one and lift. Flick the same half down to hide the keyboard. The 23 languages Flikzi types.
A new line
In chat apps, Enter often sends the message. Flick Enter down to start a new line instead; the key shows a small ↵ in the apps where this applies.
Voice typing
Tap the mic at the right end of the strip and speak; tap it again to stop. Your words appear as you say them. Flikzi uses the speech recognition that Android runs on the phone itself (Android 12 and later), so the sound never leaves your phone. Android asks for the microphone the first time you tap the mic. Voice typing is part of Flikzi Pro. Voice typing.
One-handed mode
Hold the emoji key or ?123, then slide left or right. The keyboard becomes narrower and moves to that edge of the
phone, so one thumb reaches every key. Two keys beside it flip it to the other side or put it back to full width.
One-handed mode.
Clipboard keys, history and shortcuts (Flikzi Pro)
The keys at the ends of the space bar are the clipboard. The left one is copy on top and cut below; hold it to undo. The right one is paste on top and select all below; hold it to open the clipboard history, the last 20 things you copied. In settings each half can do another action, or type your own text, such as your email address.
Text shortcuts are your own short words for longer text. Type addr and your address leads the strip: tap it and it takes the shortcut’s place. Text shortcuts.
Taps saved
What everyday edits take on a standard layout, with a shift key, a backspace key and a ?123 key, and on Flikzi:
| To do this | A standard keyboard | Flikzi |
|---|---|---|
| A digit | ?123, the digit, then ABC: 3 taps | 1 flick down on its letter |
| A mark such as ? or @ | ?123, the mark, then ABC: 3 taps | 1 flick down on its letter |
| A rarer symbol such as % or € | ?123, a second symbols page, the symbol, then ABC | ?123, then 1 flick; a space takes you back to letters |
| An accent such as é | A long press, then pick from a menu | None in most words: the dictionary’s spelling brings it (in French, francais becomes français). Or 1 hold and slide |
| A capital at the start of a sentence | None: it comes on its own | None: it comes on its own |
| A capital elsewhere | Shift, then the letter: 2 taps | 1 flick up on the letter |
| Make a word you typed UPPERCASE | Delete it, caps lock, type it again | 2 flicks up on the right of the space bar |
| Delete a few letters | A backspace tap per letter, or hold it | 1 swipe on the space bar, and hold to keep going |
| Bring back what you deleted | Type it again | Swipe right on the space bar |
| Move the cursor | Tap in the text and drag the handle | Hold the space bar, then slide |
| Switch language | Find the globe key, tap it | 1 flick up on the left of the space bar |
| Hide the keyboard | The back gesture or button | 1 flick down on the left of the space bar |
Typing a word takes a tap per letter on both. Many keyboards add long-press symbols, backspace swipes or a space-bar cursor of their own; on Flikzi the gestures are the whole design.
Emoji
Tap the emoji key, the half key right of l, to open the emoji panel. It has categories, your recent emoji, a search and its own delete key. Emoji that have skin tones show a small mark in the corner: hold one to choose a tone, and Flikzi remembers your choice for that emoji. After a space, the strip suggests emoji for the word you just finished. All of this runs on your phone. Why that matters.