Smartphone keyboards dynamically adjust the "hitbox" of each key based on what's previously been typed and overall letter frequencies of the language. So when typing "Paris is the capital of Fr..." [*], the A key becomes much easier to hit than its neighbors. Fun fact: back in the day, when this tech was less refined, certain letter contexts made the hitboxes of some keys effectively nonexistent [0].
I wonder if an approach like KKeyboard with larger but statically combined keys leads to faster typing than the current approach with smaller but dynamically "combined" keys.
[*] In reality, the context is modeled using a simple Hidden Markov Model with a much smaller effective context window that could not associate "Paris" and "France." But you get the idea.
Need Liquid Keys to make this behavior visible, which will lead to requests for turning it off, joining the iOS Accessibility Settings Hall of {F|Sh}ame.
browningstreet 5 hours ago [-]
Not successfully though. Half the time I hit b or n in place of space. I can type numerous words before I notice. I've thought about just making a new iPhone keyboard app with just a big space bar.
The iPhone keyboard is the least successful tech I use each day.
Thanks for the thoughtful point!
Hitbox behavior is largely constrained by OS -level policies from the manufacturers, so major improvements on that side are difficult for now.
At this stage, I'm mainly trying to evaluate the layout and the input method itself - and hopefully, in the future, issues like hitbox tuning can be improved as well.
rerdavies 39 minutes ago [-]
Not it's not.
rationalist 6 hours ago [-]
I always make the same typos in Gboard. I don't know if they adjust the hotboxes based on common letter sequences, but it would be nice if they adjusted it based on people's typing performance.
quamserena 7 hours ago [-]
Omg I thought this was just me. How do I turn this off? On iOS, this has been bugging me for a long time.
shakna 6 hours ago [-]
There is no builtin setting in iOS to disable it. However most 3rd party keyboards don't have it, as implementing it without OS support is a huge pain.
devmor 7 hours ago [-]
I would love a way to turn it off as well, this is the source of the majority of my annoying typos.
sushisource 1 hours ago [-]
Seriously this explains so much. I thought I was going crazy, or just becoming an old man who can't type on a phone any more.
AAAAaccountAAAA 6 hours ago [-]
Looks nice. Reminds me of MessagEase[1] and clones, such as ThumbKey[2]. I use the latter for my mobile text input needs. However, that method is sometimes prone to typos, since one key may have up to 9 different characters assigned to it, and it is easy to swipe slightly wrong way. QWERTYmini could be better in that aspect, since there are only 2 characters per key.
* Does this still expect you to hit every key but some of them need multiple taps?
* Are they doing fancy autocorrect-like magic to decide which letter you meant, and if so why use this instead of taking it one more step and using http://minuum.com/ ?
* Or is it something else?
QWERTYmini 7 hours ago [-]
Yes, all characters are entered with tap or double-tap, and it also supports simultaneous taps as an advanced option.
It’s fully local, with no autocorrect or prediction.
Minuum compresses QWERTY into one row, but QWERTY mini keeps the QWERTY structure to preserve the familiar typing experience.
Thanks for your interest!
yjftsjthsd-h 7 hours ago [-]
So like, to type "x" a person would hit the dx key twice?
I guess that's better for precise typing, but for normal prose it's probably faster+easier to just type blindly and let the machine figure out what you mean.
QWERTYmini 7 hours ago [-]
Both with- and without-autocorrect have their pros and cons.
This layout could also work well if predictive features are added later.
sublinear 3 hours ago [-]
I just tried this out, and the need to double-tap was a total deal breaker making words like "success" a failure.
The other problem with the way this double tapping works is that I encountered missed spaces or other weirdness if I type too quickly. It's as if it's having trouble detecting new keydown events when another key is still down for a split second.
QWERTYmini 3 hours ago [-]
There is, understandably, a slight delay with double-tapping, so using simultaneous key presses can help improve speed when typing quickly. Thank you for your feedback.
davtbaum 2 hours ago [-]
yeah, I agree. It feels pretty rough to me. On older feature phones, you could accelerate this with a right arrow key which would lock to the key for key duplicates like 'cc' in success. Definitely feels like this needs a dedicated key for doing that
morsch 5 hours ago [-]
I mean for one thing Minuum is dead, the play store link is 404 and the last time I tried it it didn't work perfectly with recent Android versions. Which is sad because it was great when it was still maintained.
nullpilot 4 hours ago [-]
I believe Minuum is the only app I ever paid for on the Play Store, after having followed it since the Kickstarter campaign. It was the only option that made typing on a small touchscreen feel mostly frictionless for me, contrary to the varying degrees of frustration of other options. As a result, I now hardly type on my phone.
yjftsjthsd-h 4 hours ago [-]
That's odd, it works fine on my Android 15 phone.
teach 8 hours ago [-]
You might want to throw a CDN in front of this -- the site is realllllly struggling and seems very complex under the hood.
Thanks for letting me know! The website isn’t optimized yet, so it’s running slower than usual. I’ll work on improving it soon. Really appreciate your interest!
davtbaum 2 hours ago [-]
Just tried it out, how do you accelerate disambiguating a double key 'nn' in 'dinner' vs alternate? This doesn't feel very usable compared to the existing keyboard to me
rcarmo 5 hours ago [-]
Hmmm. Cute. I use a Bluehand (https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2023/08/08/1230), which is physical and has... half the keys, but that relies on chording. I might take a look at the idea of doing a 20-key physical keyboard that looks like this.
stevage 6 hours ago [-]
I don't really understand how people manage to type with two thumbs while holding their phone securely. I use my left thumb and my right index finger, with my right thumb supporting the base of the phone.
wffurr 6 hours ago [-]
I use my left pinky to hold the base of the phone. Lots of people with bigger phones use one of those stick on things on the back and hold it with their index and middle finger.
rtkwe 5 hours ago [-]
+1 for the pinky phone shelf. Worked better when phones were smaller and lighter now I have a popsocket on the back and hold it either between the middle and index or middle and ring depending on what I'm doing. Sometimes with middle and index the pinky comes out again to stabilize the phone too.
I really dislike how iOS handles dictation as a keyboard feature.
I want to try this keyboard, but I also don't want to give up dictation. If I have to switch back to the iOS keyboard to enable dictation, that's just enough friction that I'm not going to move to something else.
thebeardisred 5 hours ago [-]
I noticed "International patent (PCT/KR2025/099177), International Publication "
Are you truly seeking a software patent for this? If so what is the plan for leveraging ownership over the patent?
ugh123 7 hours ago [-]
Seems like there's 25% wasted space at the bottom for the language globe icon that could be used for something useful
QWERTYmini 7 hours ago [-]
Good point. I’m not sure why Apple designed it that way either. Anyway, the globe icon area is required by the OS, so its size can’t be reduced. Thanks for the feedback!
chente 5 hours ago [-]
Reminds of T9 texting and I did like T9. I'll have to try this.
I noticed "copyright info goes here (c) 2025" - which you might want to update!
toast0 7 hours ago [-]
> I noticed "copyright info goes here (c) 2025" - which you might want to update!
It's still 2025, so that's fine :P post-Berne Convention, there are no forms required for copyright protection to vest, merely fixing the work upon a medium is sufficient.
Xiol 5 hours ago [-]
So vibe coded slop that clearly hasn't been reviewed is going to have access to all my input.
Interesting idea, but that's a pass from me.
highwind 7 hours ago [-]
I like it but I wish I can change the size of the keyboard. Buttons are too small on my phone.
7 hours ago [-]
tomtomistaken 6 hours ago [-]
Looks nice. Can I swipe write with it?
Rendered at 02:43:01 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
I wonder if an approach like KKeyboard with larger but statically combined keys leads to faster typing than the current approach with smaller but dynamically "combined" keys.
[*] In reality, the context is modeled using a simple Hidden Markov Model with a much smaller effective context window that could not associate "Paris" and "France." But you get the idea.
[0] https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/impossible-to-type-okee...
The iPhone keyboard is the least successful tech I use each day.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MessagEase
2. https://github.com/dessalines/thumb-key
* Does this still expect you to hit every key but some of them need multiple taps?
* Are they doing fancy autocorrect-like magic to decide which letter you meant, and if so why use this instead of taking it one more step and using http://minuum.com/ ?
* Or is it something else?
I guess that's better for precise typing, but for normal prose it's probably faster+easier to just type blindly and let the machine figure out what you mean.
The other problem with the way this double tapping works is that I encountered missed spaces or other weirdness if I type too quickly. It's as if it's having trouble detecting new keydown events when another key is still down for a split second.
Cool idea though.
https://archive.is/gW1rO
really appreciate the help!
I want to try this keyboard, but I also don't want to give up dictation. If I have to switch back to the iOS keyboard to enable dictation, that's just enough friction that I'm not going to move to something else.
Are you truly seeking a software patent for this? If so what is the plan for leveraging ownership over the patent?
I noticed "copyright info goes here (c) 2025" - which you might want to update!
It's still 2025, so that's fine :P post-Berne Convention, there are no forms required for copyright protection to vest, merely fixing the work upon a medium is sufficient.
Interesting idea, but that's a pass from me.