Introduction
Using Viskey should be straightforward without reading this guide. However, advanced features are explained below.
Privacy & Permissions Note
Viskey does not require network access, but audio features and spell check require Full Access. Full Access is granted in device Settings under General > Keyboard > Keyboards > Viskey.
Gestures
You can use swipes and press-and-hold gestures to accomplish the following:
One-finger swipes
- Left: Deletes the previous character.
- Right: Inserts a space (the only way to do so in landscape mode, where the space key is omitted to make room for larger keys).
- Down: Inserts a newline (same as tapping the Return key).
- Up: Browses spelling suggestions.
Two-finger swipes
- Down: Dismisses the keyboard.
- Up: Moves to the next keyboard.
- Left: Deletes the previous word.
- Right: Switches to next language in Viskey, if more than one configured in the settings.
Popup menu
As an alternative to two-finger swipes, you can access keyboard actions through a popup menu:
- Press and hold the 123 key (or the abc key on numbers and symbols pages) for half a second.
- Slide your finger to the desired option and lift to select it:
- Dismiss: Dismisses the keyboard.
- Next Kb: Moves to the next keyboard.
- Next language: Switches to the next language in Viskey (only shown when more than one language is enabled in settings).
- To cancel, slide outside the menu or release on the key itself.
Settings
To enable Viskey, go to device Settings > General > Keyboard > Keyboards and add Viskey. Note that audio and spell check require Full Access, which you enable in Settings after adding Viskey. Network access is not required.
Viskey-specific settings are available in this app. If you activate Speak Words or Speak Characters, Viskey provides self-voicing, or uses VoiceOver if active. Inserted characters and words are announced at a higher pitch, deletions at a lower pitch, and other announcements at a regular pitch.
Moving through the text
You can:
- Move through existing text with the cursor keys in the preview area (on the left and right edges).
- Hold the Space key and tap a cursor key to move by word.
- Tap where you want to place the cursor in the preview area.
- Drag horizontally in the preview area to scroll the text.
Preview area settings
- Direct manipulation: Disable this in Viskey settings to turn off tap-to-position cursor placement and horizontal scrolling.
- Two-finger tap zoom: Tap the preview area with two fingers for a temporary zoomed view. Tap again to exit the zoomed view.
- 2-line zoom layout: Displays zoomed text across two lines, making more text visible.
Typing accented characters
This is like on a PC, tap first the accent, then the base character. Example, first tap ^ then a to get â.
Note that if auto-correction is on, it will in most cases enter the accents for you.
Spelling support
In the Settings tab, you can configure Viskey to highlight spelling mistakes in red, beep when a misspelled word is entered, or both. To add a highlighted word to your user dictionary, double-tap it in the preview area. You can view and edit your dictionary under Settings > Spelling > Words.
If auto-correction is turned off, swipe up anywhere on the keyboard to cycle through spelling suggestions (the list wraps around).
If you have both audio beeps and auto-correction enabled, Viskey plays an error sound when no suggestions are available, and an auto-correction sound when a word is corrected.
Dictation
Viskey supports fast, private on-device voice dictation. Your speech is transcribed directly on your device, and your audio never leaves the device.
Setting up dictation
- In Viskey settings, turn on Allow dictation.
- When prompted, grant microphone permission.
- A microphone key is added to the keyboard to start dictation.
Language support
Dictation always transcribes in the active keyboard layout language. The multilingual Parakeet model supports Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish. Dictation is not currently supported for Norwegian and Turkish.
Supported languages
Viskey has keyboard layouts for English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, and Turkish.
Switching languages
You can switch languages directly from the keyboard. By default, only the device language is active; you can enable additional languages in Viskey settings. To switch the layout, swipe right with 2 fingers on the keyboard, or select Next language from the popup menu (press and hold 123 or abc). Switching languages also updates the spell check and self-voicing language.
Credits and Copyrights
Viskey programming and design: 2015-2026, Harri Pasanen, MPaja Ltd, Finland.
On Android, on-device dictation is powered by NVIDIA Parakeet (parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v3), licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0):