The keyboard that translates as you type
Marta
Madrid
What it does, precisely
A translation keyboard is a system extension: you install it like an app, enable it in Settings, and from then on it sits next to the stock keyboard in every app you write in — messages, email, notes, work chats.
You type in your own language and the translation appears above the keys. One tap swaps it in and you send that. The app you are writing in has no idea it exists: as far as it is concerned, you simply typed some text.
Why copy and paste is not enough
The usual round trip is: leave the chat, open the translator, paste, copy the result, go back, paste again. Six steps for one sentence, repeated for every message.
It is not about the seconds lost: it is that at that price you stop doing it. The conversation moves faster than the round trip, and after two messages you write what you can rather than what you meant.
Context is the difference
A sentence on its own is ambiguous. “See you later” takes a different shape depending on who the other person is, how well you know them, and what you said to each other two lines earlier. A translator handed only that sentence has to guess.
A keyboard, by contrast, can see the previous lines of the conversation. That is what lets it get pronouns, gender and register right: the difference between a correct translation and the right one.
What to check before installing one
A keyboard sees what you write. That is why iOS asks for an explicit permission — Full Access — and why it is worth reading what an app does with it before granting it.
Three questions are enough. Does the translation happen on the phone, or is it sent to a server? What happens in password fields: iOS passes no context at all to the keyboard in secure fields, but an app can still ask to work there. And what is kept — only the sentences, or who you were writing them to as well?
Translating is not learning
A translation keyboard solves today's problem: sending that message. But if it only translates, a month from now you are where you started, with the same sentence to translate again.
Glotta starts there and keeps what you wrote: the sentences you actually use become a deck, ordered by how many times you have needed them, and they come back for review at the right moment. The translation is the means, not the end.
Frequently asked questions
Does it work in every app?
In all the ones where you use the keyboard: messages, email, notes, social apps, work chats. The host app does not need to know anything about it, because to the system it is a keyboard like any other.
Does it need a connection?
That depends on the app you pick. With Glotta the language pair downloads once and from then on the translation happens on the phone: on a plane, on the underground, or abroad with no data, it works exactly as it does at home.
Can a keyboard read my passwords?
No. In secure fields iOS passes no context to the keyboard at all: there is nothing there to read. In Glotta the setting that would allow it to work in secure fields exists, and it is off by default.
Do I have to uninstall the system keyboard?
No, it stays installed. You switch between the two with the globe key, whenever you like.
Watch it do it
The home page has the same keyboard inside a real conversation: typing, translating, swapping in and sending, on a loop.