Fleksy keyboard gets a new owner and a new update

Fleksy is now owned by a company called Thingthing, and for the first time in over a year, it’s getting updated to a new build in the Play Store.

If you use the Fleksy keyboard app, you probably know a thing or two about the complicated history behind it. The developers behind the app weren’t particularly providing the necessary support, and it was subsequently acquired by Pinterest last year. Since April 2016, the app received no updates whatsoever, and Fleksy seemed dead. Until now, that is.

A company called Thingthing has announced that it has “taken over development of competitor Fleksy, the fastest keyboard in the world.” Although Thingthing doesn’t seem to have any app of its own on the market right now, the official statement says that with the acquisition, the company is “closer than ever to [its] goal of bringing you the world’s first Keyboard as a Platform.” In other words, it’s possible that Thingthing has been developing a product internally and that Fleksy will help accelerate that.

Along with a new owner, Fleksy is also getting a new update in the Play Store. Although it doesn’t sound like a major one, it includes improvements and bug fixes for certain languages:

• Improved the sharing mechanism for gifs and stickers: now, in supported apps, you can share your stickers and gifs directly in the current conversation, (without having to choose the recipient)
• Fixed problems with predictions in languages like Romanian and Ukrainian: the keyboard would crash when you tried to type “Fleksy” – well that was embarrassing
• Fixed various other bugs and some compatibility issues with Android Nougat

Thingthing claims that big changes are coming in the future: Fleksy will get a new name, more themes and extensions, improved autocorrect, and continued focus on data privacy. Although it’s not clear what “Keyboard as a Platform” entails exactly, it sounds like Thingthing has big things (no pun intended) planned for Fleksy.