The latest SwiftKey update has arrived in the Play Store and as we sometimes see given the time of year, this one includes some holiday cheer. Specifically, the folks at SwiftKey have added a new theme called Ice. The overall color of the Ice theme is blue, however you will get a bit of something extra when you begin typing.
Sitting just above is what the Ice keyboard looks like before you begin using it. As you type, or swipe through your words, the keyboard has falling snow. The snow falls as you type out your words and to some extent, even builds up along the bottom just below the space bar. You can see the Ice theme with snow in the image sitting below.
SwiftKey users can switch to the Ice theme by heading into the settings. That means either tapping and holding the 123 key in the bottom left of the keyboard, or launching the SwiftKey app from the app drawer. Either way, you want to head to the option for themes and select Ice.
Other changes that come along with this most recent update include the simplified installer we saw with the beta 4.4 release, improved language pack management and some bug fixes and general improvements. The bug fixes break down as follows;
- Fixed a bug with punctuation where the symbols weren’t inserted in some situations
- Improved performance while switching fields or after sending messages in some apps
- Fixed several instances of Force Closes in the app
- Fixed last column of the keyboard being cut on smileys layout
- Fixed a bug in Hangouts for the keyboard not inserting text after an emoticon
- Fixed a bug in the installer summary screen where if you tap themes twice in quick successions, it opened two instances of the Settings
- Keyboard doesn’t hide the field when signing into Cloud anymore
- Not showing notifications on Cloud screen during installation anymore
Looking outside of this Play Store release for SwiftKey, there was also a recent beta release. That one arrived as beta 4.5 and included an optional number row and support for emoji. SwiftKey beta 4.5 is available for those looking to do a bit of playing testing, but it cannot be found from the Play Store. As it has been in the past, the SwiftKey beta releases need to be side loaded and those APK files can be found on the SwiftKey blog (link below).
SOURCE: SwiftKey Blog, Google Play Store
