Have you been excited by the prospect of responding to your WhatsApp, Viber, and other messages directly from your Android Wear smartwatch only to find out that typing on a circular screen smaller than 2-inches isn’t exactly the most precise and convenient way to communicate? Well then, if you still haven’t completely given up on that idea, finding a third-party wearable keyboard that suits your needs is a must and as it happens, one such app just hit Play Store earlier today. It’s called Snapkeys Keyboard Pack and its developers describe it as the perfect solution for quick and painless typing on a small touch screen that a typical Android Wear smartwatch is equipped with.
The way it works is actually rather cool: instead of listing out a traditional QWERTY keyboard and letting you squint and suffer while trying to hit a five by five pixels area that represents the letter you want to tap on next, Snapkeys displays just six keys on screen at any given time while a surprisingly smart predictive algorithm tries to guess what are you going to type next. And it usually succeeds in that, as well. If you look at the trailer below, you’ll see that the keyboard still lists the full QWERTY keyboard but distributes it across six buttons so that you can always quickly select the group you need. Snapkeys also boasts a similarly useful and accessible set of menus with special characters and emojis and also supports gestures and a bunch of different themes.
The app is 29MB in size and supports all Android Wear 2.0 smartwatches connected to any device running Android 4.2 and newer. The smartwatch version of the app is actually already packed with the smartphone and tablet one that you can download for free by following the Play Store link below. The app currently doesn’t have any kind of ads or in-app purchases though it’s unclear whether that will be the case in the future. Furthermore, while certain reviews on the Play Store mention an issue with the app crashing when selecting between different languages, it’s confirmed that this bug doesn’t affect all devices but it’s currently unknown what causes it.