Swype keyboard gains new features and free Material themes

Swype, the popular keyboard app, has received a substantial update that brings support for emoji in multiple languages, floating mode, and some freebies.

Users of Swype keyboard speaking English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Korean or Chinese will be able to communicate in their pictograms of choice thanks to the newly added “intuitive support” for emoji in these languages. Simply type a word like “love” or “football” and one of the options displayed in the suggestion bar will be the corresponding emoji.

The update adds a return key shown when the app supplies a smiley button by default (like in Hangouts), which has been a gripe of quite a few users. You’ll also be able to detach the keyboard and move it around on the screen; this floating mode should especially be useful on tablets.

Swype is throwing in three free themes with the update: Material Dark, Material Light, and Bumblebee (high contrast). Unfortunately, the Material themes both lack the secondary symbols from the keys, making them all but unusable for those who prefer to long press for punctuation.

The changelog also mentions bug fixes and performance improvements, as well as the addition of the following languages: Vietnamese Telex, German CH, Italian CH, Burmese Zawgyi, Sinhala.

Check out Swype in the Play Store to install the update for yourself.