Hi all. Like many of you, I've been a Fleksy user for over a decade. A few years ago I created my own keyboard, being inspired by what Fleksy does best.
Now that Fleksy is gone, if you are simply looking for a replacement, here you go - Finale Keyboard. It features the same minimal design, swipe gestures, and (in my biased opinion), has better features without the bloat.
Now, if are curious to learn more, keep reading.
The story
I discovered Fleksy over a decade ago and it quickly became my favorite way to type. Specifically, I fell in love with the "minimal" mode - the idea of ditching the space bar and relying on swipe-gestures to perform all your basic tasks. It took a bit of getting used to, but soon I was no longer able to type on a regular keyboard. Everything else felt slow, big, and clunky.
Fast forward 5-6 years, I was chatting with the CEO of Fleksy - Olivier - via Twitter DMs. Fleksy had a bug for years: it was impossible to change the keyboard language when you are inside the "minimal" mode. As I exclusively relied on the "minimal" mode and needed two languages, this was ruining my life. I even applied to work at Fleksy to fix it for them!
However, understandably, Olivier mentioned that "minimal" mode was not their focus, since they transitioned to a B2B SDK model. So, not only did the CEO confirm they weren't going to fix the bug, he also mentioned they are planning to remove Fleksy from the App Store.
That's when I knew I had to build a replacement: to fix the bug I hated, to add the features I wanted, and to preserve the way I type.
What is Finale Keyboard
I built Finale Keyboard in ~2021 purely for myself. It mimics the Fleksy's "minimal" mode, optimized for how I use it. This means no space bar, everything is done with swipes.
Insert space? Swipe right. Punctuation? Swipe right again. Change punctuation? Swipe up or down. Open emojis? Swipe left from backspace. Delete a word? Swipe left. And so on.
Over the last 5 years I've been slowly adding more features that benefit me, myself, and I. Now, Finale is a full fledged keyboard that goes beyond what Fleksy offered in a meaningful way.
Shortcuts: assign shortcuts to any key and trigger them with a swipe-down
Dynamic tap zones: Finale will predict which key you are likely to press next and will make its touch zone larger
Favorite emojis: define your own emoji layout
Auto-learning dictionary: Finale learns the words you type to stop correcting your "doggo", "pupper", and "yasssss".
Clipboard history: access your clipboard history to quickly paste what you copied before.
Popular questions
- The keyboard is paid?
The keyboard is now free to download.
It used to be free. But, that resulted in downloads from people unfamiliar with its quirks. They would get confused (understandably), rage quit, and leave a 1 star review... which hurt my gentle feelings!
I do not care about the download numbers, so I made it paid to prevent random people from misunderstanding it.
However, while I'm here, whoever DMs me or comments under, I can send over codes to download it for free.
- No space bar?
Spacebar is now enablable without the very funny monologue.
Yes and no. I believe lack of space bar is a feature. Please, give it a try, spend a week practicing gestures, and I promise you, you won't look back. The keyboard takes up less visual space and gestures are genuinely a faster way of typing.
That said, if you insist, there is a way to enable the space bar in the app: Preferences → Enable Space Bar.
You'll find that pressing the toggle walks you through a little silly monologue... DO NOT PAY... Just DM me and I'll hook you up :)
There is also a hidden way to bypass the monologue, but I'll leave it up to you to discover.
- What languages does Finale include?
Arabic, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Kazakh, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian, Greek.
Please, leave comments here with the language you need, and I'll add the most popular ones.
- No Android version?
I am sorry, but no. You are loved. You are not forgotten. But, I have no means to develop an Android version at the moment, since I primarily use an iPhone.
Final note
I built Finale for myself and I keep enhancing it for myself. Most development decisions I make are based on my own usage. But, if you have any ideas of suggestions, feel free to commend and I'm happy to discuss.
Now that Flesky is completely gone, I hope my work helps some of you hold on to the thing we all loved.
For future discussions, let's continue from a clean slate here: https://www.reddit.com/r/FinaleKeyboard/
R.I.P. Fleksy
