No Swype-style option for tablets in Windows 10?

[TopEnd77]

How is it there is no option available? I've been using an Android phone and tablet and rely on Swype. I suffered a spinal cord injury in a diving accident and being paralyzed my hands/fingers were affected. So whereas I used to ten-finger type now it's one finger or a knuckle (whatever works or is available..haha) on a keyboard or the same but also a stylus in tablet mode.

I'm not crazy about voice recognition, tried that. I know the keys well so I'm much faster using Swype. What I've been doing since my Galaxy Note 10.1" tablet broke is write text using Swype on my phone then saving it to Keep or Evernote then copying and pasting it where I need it. It's very frustrating and not efficient, therefore I'm less productive. For instance, writing this message directly to this point has taken me close to 10 minutes, but using Swype it would have taken at most 3 minutes, including fixing any mistakes.

My point in writing this is hoping someone see this and understands the need. I just ordered a Surface Book 2 for the performance and flexibility, which was not cheap, now i'm questioning that decision and wondering if I should go a different route because it doesn't solve my (as well as many others) issue of typing. VERY FRUSTRATING!!!

Hoping there is a solution soon! You would think since Microsoft purchased SwiftKey in 2016 this issue would have been resolved. That being said, it shouldn't take Microsoft long to remedy this if they desire to. Maybe a petition or getting the ADA involved will help?

Tim

 

[Scienceguy Labs]

Sorry to hear about your accident.
If you open the keyboard, there should be a little keyboard icon with a gear on it. You can click that and select the Windows Phone style keyboard as your default keyboard. It's small, but it does support the swipe function.
Hope that helps. MS really needs a full sized swipe option though.

 

[TopEnd77]

Scienceguy Labs, thanks for the help but weird, I don't have that option. I'm using a Windows 10 NextBook Flexx 11.6" for now. It just installed the new update and now is doing some weird things.

But first, all I see when the tablet mode keyboard comes up is the keyboard icon in the bottom right corner but it doesn't have a gear on it.

When I tap it 4 modes/icons show- tablet keyboard, standard keyboard, pen (but grayed out) and split keyboard. There is no button that takes me to a Windows phone keyboard...not on the on-screen keyboard either.

I checked under Settings-->Devices-->Typing and there was no option like that either. I also looked under Ease of Access-->Typing in the Settings Menu because Swype should be there if it's an option, but there's nothing.

What computer or version of Windows are you using that you see that Windows phone option for the keyboard?

As far as the weird thing it's doing after the update is first when I powered it on the tablet keyboard wouldn't show up at all- neither when I tapped in a box to type or if I hit the keyboard icon at the bottom right corner, so I restarted it.

Now when I turn it on the keyboard pops up when I tap to respond to your message but as soon as I hit a letter or the space bar or something the keyboard disappears. It keeps doing that over and over. I'm having to type this on my phone and then hopefully I can copy and paste it in to respond. It's weird!

I've been using it for the past week with no issues like this, even right before the update was installed.

Thanks,
Tim

 

[Scienceguy Labs]

Well, I'm perplexed.
I'm using an HP Elitepad 1000. I just updated to the latest update, Version 1803.
I don't know what's going on with your keyboard, unfortunately. You might want to try a system refresh, but keep your files.
When I'm using my full-sized keyboard, the settings gear is at the far left. Does your keyboard have that? See the first picture. Also, I long pressed the bottom task bar and made sure that the option to show the keyboard icon in the tray was checked. See the second picture.

 

[Scienceguy Labs]

I'm hoping that the keyboard option that I use will be available on your Surface Book that you ordered.

 

[TopEnd77]

Weird, I turned the computer off for a bit and just turned it back on. Now the keyboard works and I have the keyboard and gear icon as well as the phone keyboard. It will do for now but like you said earlier, they need to make it available for the bigger keyboard because the small one is missing important keys like the arrows, which are needed because for some reason when trying to go back and select or edit text it only places the cursor before or after a word and not in the middle.

I'm not sure why this isn't mentioned in the Ease of Access section so thanks for your help!

Tim

 

[Scienceguy Labs]

Weird, I turned the computer off for a bit and just turned it back on. Now the keyboard works and I have the keyboard and gear icon as well as the phone keyboard. It will do for now but like you said earlier, they need to make it available for the bigger keyboard because the small one is missing important keys like the arrows, which are needed because for some reason when trying to go back and select or edit text it only places the cursor before or after a word and not in the middle.

I'm not sure why this isn't mentioned in the Ease of Access section so thanks for your help!

Tim

I'm glad you got that working. The phone keyboard is not the perfect solution though. It's very small and there are definitely things missing from it. I'm not really sure why MS doesn't allow the main, on-screen keyboard to have the swipe function. It's seems like it would be a relatively easy addition. But, then again, they have a lot of work to do on the tablet side of the OS. I hope they allow that soon though.

 

[Lester Izaac]

That is really odd.
I use swype in my android mobile for so long and also couldn´t do the same using my Samsung NP940 laptop on tablet´s mode.

There´s simply no option or setting to do it.

Anyway, hope to find a solution for this. Swype really helps a lot.

How is it there is no option available? I've been using an Android phone and tablet and rely on Swype. I suffered a spinal cord injury in a diving accident and being paralyzed my hands/fingers were affected. So whereas I used to ten-finger type now it's one finger or a knuckle (whatever works or is available..haha) on a keyboard or the same but also a stylus in tablet mode.

I'm not crazy about voice recognition, tried that. I know the keys well so I'm much faster using Swype. What I've been doing since my Galaxy Note 10.1" tablet broke is write text using Swype on my phone then saving it to Keep or Evernote then copying and pasting it where I need it. It's very frustrating and not efficient, therefore I'm less productive. For instance, writing this message directly to this point has taken me close to 10 minutes, but using Swype it would have taken at most 3 minutes, including fixing any mistakes.

My point in writing this is hoping someone see this and understands the need. I just ordered a Surface Book 2 for the performance and flexibility, which was not cheap, now i'm questioning that decision and wondering if I should go a different route because it doesn't solve my (as well as many others) issue of typing. VERY FRUSTRATING!!!

Hoping there is a solution soon! You would think since Microsoft purchased SwiftKey in 2016 this issue would have been resolved. That being said, it shouldn't take Microsoft long to remedy this if they desire to. Maybe a petition or getting the ADA involved will help?

Tim