Acti Keyboard beat Gboard by doing the one thing Google's keyboard refuses to do

Ah, Gboard. Noblest of keyboard apps. So simple you don't think about it, yet subtly packed with more features than you'll ever need.

I've tried countless keyboards over the years, from SwiftKey to the bizarre 16-key QWERTY Mini, yet Gboard is the app I always return to.

However, I recently discovered a new keyboard that won me over in the most unexpected of ways.

I didn't think Acti's AI-first philosophy would resonate with me, but it's replaced Gboard and shown me how Gemini should work, to boot.

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By  Sanuj Bhatia

The Acti keyboard brings the information you need at a prompt

In theory, you shouldn't need to switch apps to find information

Here's how the Acti keyboard works. The space bar is replaced by the Acti Bar, which acts like a normal space bar when pressed.

However, when I hold down the Acti Bar, it surfaces the relevant information based on what's in my text box.

So, let's say my friend asks me about where we're going for dinner that evening. I enter the place name, tap and hold the Acti Bar, and after a few seconds, it surfaces relevant information, including Google Maps links and reviews.

This is a manual version of the functionality that Magic Cue boasts. Someone prompts you, Magic Cue surfaces relevant information, and you tap send.

However, it rarely surfaces, and when it does, it's often incorrect. Acti's strength is that you have to prompt the search.

While this is technically slower than Magic Cue, it's more reliable. Imagine the difference between chucking a pen into a mug across the room and walking over and placing it in the mug.

One's much faster, but if you want the pen in the mug, you're probably best taking a few seconds.

Acti Bar doesn't work as advertised, until it does

It doesn't work as intended, but it still works

When I booted up the Acti keyboard for the first time, I was prompted with a sleek demonstration of Acti Bar's capabilities.

A nifty animation showed me how typing in a place name, then activating Acti Bar, would immediately replace the text with a Google Maps link. It also demonstrated a similar action using a song name and Spotify link.

However, this never happened for me. The result of pressing Acti Bar was usually closer to what I expected from Google's AI Overviews, not what the app promised.

Sounds like your typical AI experience, right? I was ready to discard the app, but then I realized that the Acti keyboard could do what I wanted, but I had to do it myself.

The Acti keyboard's programmable keys are where the magic lies

Skill Keys are the keyboard's best feature, not the Acti Bar

Acti lets you turn any key into a Skill Key. When long-pressed, they trigger a skill.

The community creates these "skills," and you can bind them to any key. One example is a text field that creates an event in Google Calendar for you. Extremely handy, and one I've used numerous times.

Another skill replaced a song name with a Spotify link, exactly what Acti Bar was meant to do.

However, I couldn't find an adequate skill to replace place names with Google Maps links, so I made my own.

Making my own skill in Acti was simple

And somehow, it worked perfectly

The Acti keyboard includes a workshop for creating your own skills. From start to finish, creating my "Replace with Google Maps link" skill (no points for creative names) took me less than a minute.

All I did was describe what I wanted the skill to do. In this case, it was: "Replace the provided address or place name with its Google Maps URL."

The Acti keyboard automatically found the correct model and API, put together the skill, and then I was ready to publish it as a public or private skill.

In testing, the skill worked exactly as I hoped. I could type in a place name, long-press my Skill Key, and after a few seconds it would replace the text with a Google Maps link.

I'm genuinely surprised at the Acti keyboard's effectiveness

It works, and that's good enough for me

While I have written off the Acti Bar as useless, and the relatively small icons cause me frequent mistypes, I'm grudgingly impressed by the tool.

I feel like I've only scratched the surface of what I can do with Skill Keys. For example, one community skill lets me fact-check any statement by copying text and pressing the relevant key.

However, I would also like a skill that fact-checks what's in my text box without copying it. So I'm going to build one.

The Acti keyboard illustrates a crucial truth of agentic AI

What makes Acti great is that I'm in control. I tell it when to work, how to work, and any guidelines I want the skills to follow.

I can't trust the agentic AI pushed by Google on its Pixel 11 phones, as I have no idea how it works or what's going on behind the scenes. While the Acti keyboard might be slower, it's reliable, and that's a rare quality amongst AI tools.