Most keyboards fix a typo by making a different mistake. Pilcrow is built the other way round: it reads the whole sentence, corrects what you meant, and leaves alone what you actually wrote.
Why it exists
The loudest complaint about every keyboard on every platform is the same four words: it did it again. A word you meant, rewritten. A name you use every day, “corrected”. A correction you undid, applied again the next morning.
Pilcrow is built around the opposite promise. A word that exists is not rewritten. A correction you undo is never applied to that word again. And everything it learns about you is a list you can open, read, and edit, one line at a time.
Six things it does differently
A word that exists is left alone. When it is not sure, it leaves the word as you typed it. Undo a correction once, by backspace or with the undo chip, and that pair is never tried on you again — not for this message, ever.
Measured on held-out text: a correctly spelled word is changed fewer than 7 times in 1,000.
Not just the last word. One tap weighs every word against the whole sentence, repairs what is wrong, tells you how many words it changed, and one more tap puts them all back.
Of words typed with a genuine slip, 61–72 % come back right.
Enable the languages you write and it tells them apart word by word. No globe key mid-sentence — and when you do want to switch, slide along the space bar. Type any of them on the layout your fingers already know, and swipe in all of them.
Missing accents restored 74–85 % of the time, measured per language.
Your words, the spellings you prefer, the phrases you repeat, the slips you keep making by hand. The keys quietly learn where your own finger lands, too. It keeps adapting for as long as you type, and lets go of what you stop using.
Predictions save 27–35 % of keystrokes before it has learned a thing about you.
Eight finished looks to start from, your own photo in or behind the keys, see-through keys, and the letters drawn in any of 23 fonts or 17 letter styles. Your typing stays plain text, so corrections keep working.
Every look comes in a light and a dark form, and follows your phone.
The keyboard extension contains no networking code. Not encrypted, not opt-out: absent. No account, no cloud, no analytics, no ads. Even the models that correct and predict your words run on the phone.
Works completely with Full Access switched off.
Corrections, read in context
A small network trained on the keyboard’s own decisions now chooses the word when you press space, weighing what the sentence model thinks of every candidate. It changes a correctly typed word less often than before, and when it is unsure it does nothing at all. It runs on your phone, in about a millisecond.
ver difficultvery difficult
Once the following word makes the meaning clear, a typo it had left alone gets fixed — with the undo chip, as always.
THeThe
Two capitals before lower case is the shift key still down. Acronyms with an ending, like CDs and IDs, are left alone.
sooo goodsooo good
A word stretched for emphasis stays as you typed it. The plain word waits in the bar, in case.
"see you "“see you”
A closing quote or bracket typed after a space hugs the word it closes. One that closes nothing still opens.
Accents from the next word
Where a word is right with and without its accent, the words around it decide — and a wrong guess is quietly taken back.
Words from earlier in the chat
A name or topic from a few lines up comes back as a completion. Held in memory only; nothing is kept in a password field.
New in 1.2.1 · Themes
Start from one of eight finished looks, each with a light and a dark form — or tap Surprise me for a random theme that is still readable. Then change anything: keys, letters, colours, photo. The editor shows the four colours people change first and keeps the rest under Advanced.
These are the real keyboard, drawn by the same code that runs on your phone. They follow your phone between light and dark — so does this page.
Put a photo behind the keys, inside them — each key showing its own part of the picture — or under frosted-glass keys that blur it. It works on themes that follow light and dark too. You pick it with the system photo picker, and it never leaves your phone.
One slider makes every key see-through while the letters stay solid.
Draw the letters in one of 23 fonts or 17 letter styles — script, fraktur, double-struck, bubbles, small caps and more — at 80 to 130 % of the usual size. What you type is still ordinary letters, so corrections, suggestions and swipe keep working.
Script
Didot
Fraktur
BubblesNew, and off unless you turn it on: what you type comes out in a letter style — 𝓈𝒸𝓇𝒾𝓅𝓉, 𝕕𝕠𝕦𝕓𝕝𝕖, ⓑⓤⓑⓑⓛⓔⓢ — in any app. Switch it from the toolbar’s Styled letters button or the Themes tab, and back to plain in one tap.
Corrections, suggestions, learning and swipe pause while it is on: styled letters are not words a dictionary knows. Screen readers may spell them out, so keep plain text for anything that matters. More on fancy fonts.
Built for thumbs
Draw a word and lift, or keep going through the space bar into the next one: one gesture can write a whole phrase. Swipe works in every language it ships, words with apostrophes and hyphens included, and when you pick a runner-up it remembers your choice for that gesture.
Slide along the space bar for the next language. Words already typed are read again in the new one.
Swipe from backspace to take back a word at a time, and the other way to bring them back.
Opt in, and holding a key types the small character in its corner. Hold longer for accents.
Up to six tools, and a paste chip for what you just copied. Mascot, tools and chip can each be turned off.
A one-handed mode on iPhone, and on iPad a split layout that puts every letter within reach of a thumb.
Make any key on the number and symbol planes type the character you actually use.
A closer look
The app
An ⓘ beside nearly every setting opens a short page: what it does, what it changes on the keyboard, and what it depends on. Two switches that cancel each other out say which one wins.
The numbers
Every figure comes from replaying held-out text through the shipped keyboard for each language, the same way before every release. Where a number differs by language we quote the range, not the best case.
| Measure | Result | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Correctly spelled words changed | < 7 in 1,000 | The false-correction rate. The number every “it did it again” is about. |
| Real slips fixed | 61–72 % | Of words typed with one genuine error, the share restored. |
| Keystrokes saved | 27–35 % | From predictions and completions, before any personal learning. |
| Missing accents restored | 74–85 % | In languages that use them, when typed without. |
| Tap accuracy gained | +3.8 pp | From key zones that adapt to how you aim. You never see it happen. |
| Time per keystroke | ≈ 1 ms | At the 95th percentile, on the phone. It does not lag behind your thumbs. |
What it keeps, and what leaves
Every other keyboard on this phone gives you one button: erase everything and start over.
A word of yours is kept the second time you write it. A phrase after two repeats. A preferred spelling after three. A fix you make by hand becomes a rule after two, and a slip you keep repairing — the same two letters swapped, the same letter dropped — gets cheaper to fix in every word. Each is a line on a screen you can open from the keyboard itself, and each can be deleted, blocked, or edited.
It forgets, too. A word learned from a couple of sightings and never written again retires. A correction you refused once by accident is released when you fix the word by hand or simply write it correctly a few times. Nothing is jailed by one slip of the thumb.
Set any field to don’t learn here and nothing typed there is kept. Back the whole dictionary up to a file and take it to your next phone. Forget everything does what it says, on your device, instantly.
About that warning
We recommend turning it on.
iOS shows the same warning for every third-party keyboard: that it may transmit what you type. For Pilcrow that is not possible, with the switch on or off, because the keyboard has no code that could do it.
What the switch changes here is small and specific: haptic feedback under your fingers, the clipboard panel and its paste chip, and whether the app can display the word list the keyboard has learned. Corrections, predictions, learning, themes and every downloaded language work either way. Most keyboards ask for it and stop working properly without it. This one does not need it — but haptics and the clipboard are worth having, and turning it on cannot send what you type anywhere, so we recommend it.
Price
No card, no account, and nothing auto-charges at the end.
If you decide not to buy, the keyboard keeps typing. Layouts, languages, emoji and haptics never stop working. Corrections, predictions, swipe, learning and themes wait for the unlock.
Questions
No. The keyboard extension contains no networking code at all, so there is nothing to switch off and nothing to take on trust. Only the companion app talks to the internet, and only to download language packs, to ask the App Store whether a newer version exists, to verify a purchase, and to send feedback you write yourself.
You don’t need it, and we recommend it. Typing, corrections, predictions, learning and downloaded languages all work with it off. On, it adds haptics, the clipboard panel, and lets the app show your learned words. It never means internet for this keyboard.
The keyboard keeps typing, and nothing auto-charges. Layouts, languages, emoji and haptics never stop. Corrections, predictions, swipe, learning and themes pause until you unlock it, and nothing it learned is deleted.
Yes — behind the keys, inside each key, or under frosted-glass keys. You pick it with the system photo picker, and it never leaves your phone. How keyboard themes work on iPhone.
Styled typing writes Unicode characters, so they show up in any app that shows text. It is off unless you turn it on, and corrections, suggestions, learning and swipe pause while it is on. Screen readers may read styled letters oddly, so keep plain text for anything important.
Yes, one at a time, from inside the keyboard (hold any suggestion) or from the app. You can also block a word for good, set any field to “don’t learn here”, and back the whole dictionary up to a file. Why that matters.
Forty today, with more being added. Enable several at once; it tells them apart word by word, and each can be typed on the layout you already know.
iOS always uses its own keyboard in password and phone-number fields, and some apps allow only Apple’s. The Pilcrow app has a page that lists every case and how to switch back. The full list.
It consults them so a name you type every day stops being corrected into something else. Nothing is copied anywhere, and the keyboard could not send it if it tried.
There are small language models, and they run on your phone: one predicts the next word, others decide what to correct. Nothing is sent away to be guessed at, and they answer in about a millisecond.
Yes, on iOS and iPadOS 17 or later — including a split layout that puts every letter within reach of a thumb. Split keyboards on iPad.
The pilcrow, ¶, is the mark that has stood for a paragraph since the Middle Ages. It is a character you type, and it is about writing. That seemed right.
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