Microsoft Resurrects SwiftKey for iOS After Sudden Delisting Last Month
SwiftKey, a virtual keyboard app quickly rose to popularity after its release on Android in 2010. On the back of the app’s success on Android, the company followed with an iOS release in 2014. With hundreds of millions of downloads on both platforms, it was one of the most well-known virtual keyboard applications and was even acquired by Microsoft in 2016.
Microsoft has since maintained the application on both Android and iOS, until very recently, when the company announced the delisting of SwiftKey from the Apple App Store. Apart from a short statement confirming the change, no specific reasons were given for the sudden delisting.
As of October 5, support for SwiftKey iOS will end and it will be delisted from the Apple App Store. Microsoft will continue support for SwiftKey Android as well as the underlying technology that powers the Windows touch keyboard. For those customers who have SwiftKey installed on iOS, it will continue to work until it is manually uninstalled or a user gets a new device. Please visit Support.SwiftKey.com for more information.
Now it seems, Microsoft has a change of heart, and the SwiftKey app has again been listed on the Apple App Store. Microsoft’s Caitlin Roulston confirmed this in a statement to The Verge, – “Based on customer feedback, SwiftKey iOS has been relisted on the Apple App Store.”
Both… VERY EXCITING…
— Pedram Rezaei (@pedram_re) November 18, 2022
That’s not all, Microsoft CTO Pedram Rezaei even revealed in a Twitter reply, that the company is also ‘investing heavily in the keyboard‘. The iOS SwiftKey application certainly has some catching up to do. Starting last year, the iOS version stopped receiving consistent updates, with the last one dating all the way back to 11th Aug 2021. Since then, several users on Apple devices have complained about the app’s inconsistent performance and prevalent bugs. Hopefully, with Microsoft’s renewed commitment most of these issues will be ironed out soon.
