Microsoft will discontinue its SwiftKey software keyboard for iOS and delist it from the App Store, according to a statement made to ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley when asked about the future of the software.
"As of October 5, support for SwiftKey iOS will end and it will be delisted from the Apple App Store," said Chris Wolfe, SwiftKey's director of product management. "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."
The iOS version of SwiftKey was last updated in August 2021. Most updates in the year leading up to that were of the nondescript "bug fixes and performance improvements" variety. Microsoft purchased SwiftKey in 2016 for a reported $250 million, both for its iOS and Android software keyboards and their underlying technology.
Third-party keyboard support in iOS was added all the way back to iOS 8 in 2014. Apple still maintains some restrictions on where these keyboards can and can't be used—they can't be used to type passwords or passcodes, and they can be disallowed on phones that are locked down using mobile device management (MDM) software. Apple has added some of the most common third-party keyboard features, including searchable emoji and swiping-to-type, to the built-in iOS keyboard in recent years.
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