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Gboard adds new physical keyboard toolbar for Android tablets
Jan 10, 2024 Abner Li News Source 9to5google 15 hits
After rolling out the new stylus handwriting capabilities last month, Gboard now offers a physical keyboard toolbar on Android tablets. It provides a much better experience for those that use a Bluetooth (or USB) keyboard as Google continues to optimize apps for large-screen devices. When wirelessly pairing or plugging in a keyboard to an Android tablet, a new pill-shaped toolbar appears at the bottom of the screen by default. You can move it anywhere on the screen. It provides a suggestion strip like the virtual counterpart, which previously was only accessible if you had the full software keyboard open. That’s flanked by a button to shrink the toolbar down to a vertical pill on the left/right edge (though you can also drag it into place), and quick access to the emoji picker, which opens in a floating phone-sized UI. Similarly, the overflow menu provides access to Gboard’s clipboard and translate features. “Show keyboard shortcuts” opens a scrollable panel of quick actions, while “Show on-screen keyboard” shows the virtual keys. When that’s activated, I wasn’t able to bring back the toolbar until disconnecting/reconnecting the keyboard. Meanwhile, in Gboard’s “Physical keyboard” settings, you can turn on/off this toolbar. There are also preferences for Emojis on toolbar, Suggestions while typing, Auto-capitalization, and Auto-correction. We’re seeing Gboard’s physical keyboard toolbar on version 13.6+, but it’s not yet appearing on all the Android tablets we checked. More on Gboard: Thanks, Sterling
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