Themy Keyboard is an Android app that replaces your existing keyboard with a colorful and customizable keyboard app with lots of color and different themes. With the ability to choose from six different fonts as well as quickly and easily change the color of the keyboard whenever you want with just a swipe, Themy Keyboard has a lot on offer. Emoji haven’t been forgotten about here and not only does the keyboard offer up an extra 1,000+ different emoji it allows for users to choose how they look as well. Complete with multi-language support, autocomplete and autocorrect, Themy Keyboard ticks all of the right boxes for a custom keyboard, so let’s take a look and see how good it is in use.
First thing’s first, users will need to download Themy Keyboard from the Play Store and then get it all set up.
Themy Keyboard makes it nice and easy to set up your new keyboard, but there was one thing I wasn’t quite sure of, and that was the app asking me to sign in with Google+. While SwiftKey and other keyboards ask for this as well, they tell you why it asks for this information, there was no such prompt here from Themy Keyboard.
Regardless, this can be skipped. From there, you’re able to customize the overall look and feel of the keyboard by choosing the dominant color, and then choosing the accents and such. I think that “decent color” here might be a typo, though.
Right away, I could tell that Themy Keyboard was a good-looking keyboard, but that it was too big. I found no such options in the settings to change the overall size of this, either. I fear that this was an app that was designed with 720p and 1080p displays, not Quad HD displays like the Galaxy S7 Edge I was testing on.
Despite that slip-up, Themy Keyboard is all about looking good, and that’s something it pulls off quite nicely, and there are more than enough options to keep most people happy.
Something that I really appreciated was the fact that you can choose the look and feel of emoji, which means you’re not limited to the options with the stock keyboard or those from say, SwiftKey. Even so, I think the claim of 1,000+ more emoji is a little dishonest, as these are the same emoji, just in a different style.
Even more options exist with the ability to choose from six different fonts, too.
Using Themy Keyboard in practice works pretty well, however, the overall size issue was just too much for me, personally. It’s too big a keyboard – and this is someone that uses the Google Keyboard, nothing fancy – and seeing the key popups appear in a different place was a little unnerving.
As we can see in the above example, Themy Keyboard has some great autocorrect features, but it also allows for quick completion of common words and phrases.
This works on a number of different keys including W, T, I, O, H, D and can really speed up common conversation. This, as well as the ability to choose the different emoji, are some of the best features on offer here. Speaking of which, it’s nice and easy to get to the emoji, by just swiping upwards on the keyboard. I did however, end up inputting certain characters here while trying to activate this.
Swiping is a big part of Themy Keyboard, and it makes it nice and easy to find your way around the keyboard and to get to certain features of the app.
I’ve tested a lot of keyboards on Android in my time and while I can see that Themy Keyboard has some great ideas and concepts, the overall execution is just a little off. Perhaps that’s down to the strange size of the keyboard and the inability to actually make it any smaller, but it just doesn’t feel 100%. being able to choose your own style of emoji is a great feature, and this works brilliantly with the quick and easy setup procedure, which is easily one of the better initial setup procedures out there. Despite the overly-large keyboard, this looks great and being able to change themes whenever you want and mix color and accents together to get your own look is great. There’s no need to pay for any of themes or whatever, and mixing the different colors together is a lot better than choosing from a predefined theme out there from someone else’s taste.
Ratings
- Speed (4/5) – Themy Keyboard runs nice and quickly and it’s easily one of the quickest keyboards out there to get up and running, without doubt.
- Theme (4/5) – While the mixing of colors is nice, it still feels like the stock Android keyboard in a different color, which might be a good or bad thing depending on your outlook. Either way, the mix and match colors are nice, but they could go further.
- Features (4/5) – Being able to choose the style of emoji your keyboard uses is nice, and there’s more than enough on offer here for the most die-hard typists out there. With a great level of usability as well, this is easy to use and easy to setup.
- Overall (4/5) – For those looking for a third-party Android keyboard that looks good, has a lot of flexibility but that’s still easy to use, Themy Keyboard is well worth a try.
Pros
- Offers up many different styles of emoji, allowing users to join in with their friends or stand out from the crowd.
- Super-simple to get up and running with, thanks to a speedy initial setup and a simple menu system.
- Lots of different color combinations exist allowing users the opportunity to truly make their keyboard feel their own.
- Swipe system makes it nice and easy to change the different themes as well as access different parts of keyboard really quickly.
Cons
- Keyboard feels too large and doesn’t offer a way of resizing it.
- App doesn’t make it clear why it asks for access to my Google+ profile.
Themy Keyboard is a good alternative to the stock Android keyboard as well as many alternative. It allows users to create a colorful keyboard that truly feels their own, and the emoji options will allow a lot of other users out there to either join in or stand out from their friends. Themy Keyboard is worth looking into and while there’s no denying that it needs a little work here and there, this is well worth trying out.