Enable the keyboard
Turn WM Keyboard on in system settings and make it your active input method.
Installing WM Keyboard doesn’t make it your keyboard: Android keeps every installed input method switched off until you enable it and pick it as the active one. The app’s Home screen has a card that walks you through both steps and tells you the moment you’re done.
Using the setup card
Section titled “Using the setup card”The card sits at the top of the app’s Home screen, always. It isn’t a first-run-only banner, so you can come back to it any time. It checks Android’s own input-method state about once a second (there’s no callback for “the user switched keyboards” while your app is in the background of a system dialog, so it polls while visible) and shows one of three states:
- Not enabled — “Enable WM Keyboard in system settings, then select it as your input method.” Two buttons: Enable keyboard opens Android’s input-method settings list; Switch keyboard opens the system’s keyboard picker directly.
- Enabled, not selected — “WM Keyboard is enabled. Use the button below to switch to it.” Only Switch keyboard shows now.
- Enabled and selected — a checkmark icon, tinted with the app’s accent color (not necessarily green; it follows your theme), and “WM Keyboard is your active keyboard.” Nothing left to do.
Tapping Enable keyboard takes you to the system screen where you flip WM Keyboard’s toggle on; tapping Switch keyboard opens Android’s “Change keyboard” sheet, which lists every enabled input method on the device so you can tap WM Keyboard to make it active. You can also reach both screens through Android’s own Settings app if you’d rather not use the card at all.
What the system permission warning means here
Section titled “What the system permission warning means here”When you enable any third-party keyboard, Android shows its own warning about keyboards being able to see everything you type: this is stock OS text, not something WM Keyboard writes or can customize, and its exact wording varies by Android version. It exists because some keyboards phone data home; it’s worth knowing what WM Keyboard actually does.
Core typing (the spelling dictionaries, transliteration, emoji search, prediction and everything else you type with) runs entirely on-device and works with no network connection at all. A handful of optional toolbox features reach the network, and only when you explicitly open them: weather, the word-definition dictionary lookup, translate, GIF/sticker search, and web/image search each call out to their respective service, and several require you to supply your own API key before they’ll work at all. None of that happens in the background or while you’re just typing. See Privacy at a glance for the full breakdown.
Running the setup wizard
Section titled “Running the setup wizard”The first time you open the app, it drops you into a short setup wizard instead of the Home screen. Every choice you make writes straight to settings, so backing up, skipping ahead, or tapping Skip in the top corner never loses anything, and everything here can be changed again later.
The wizard tailors itself to a short quiz on its second page, so not everyone sees every step. The full list:
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Welcome — the setup card from above, embedded in the wizard’s first page. Enabling and selecting WM Keyboard here advances the wizard automatically, so you don’t need to tap Next after coming back from system settings.
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Make it yours: three quick questions, all optional. How many languages you type in, whether you want a simple or a fully loaded keyboard, and how private it should be. Every answer’s subtitle spells out what picking it changes, the answers apply those defaults on the spot, and the rest of the wizard trims itself to match. Leave them all alone and you get the short version of the wizard. What the quiz changes below lists every setting each answer writes.
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Your languages (hidden if you answered “just one” language and only one is enabled) — your currently enabled languages, each with its layouts individually switchable, then a short Suggested for you list, then a search box for the other 350-odd. The suggestions come from your phone’s own language settings and region; see Suggested languages for exactly what’s read. Adding a language during setup enables its first layout only; add its other layouts later from Settings.
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Look & feel — theme mode (Auto/Light/Dark/AMOLED), a Material You colors toggle, a keyboard theme picker, an emoji-row mode choice, and a symbol row toggle.
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Emoji font (only if your phone’s emoji font can’t draw everything, or if the phone ships an emoji set of its own) — pick which emoji you want to see, with a live preview of each option, plus a toggle to hide emoji your device would otherwise show as blank boxes (that one only when there are any) and a pointer to importing a full emoji font later. Samsung phones get this step even though nothing is missing on them: everything draws, but it draws in Samsung’s set rather than the images most other phones show.
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Typing feedback (skipped for “keep it simple” answers) — haptics, key sounds, and the key popup bubble.
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Spacebar & keys (skipped for “keep it simple” answers) — a single choice for both spacebar-swipe directions (short and long) with a “Recommended” badge that follows your quiz answer, a toggle to replace the 🌐 key with an emoji key, and a number row toggle.
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Worth knowing about — a short tour of the features most keyboards don’t have: smart chips, tool hotwords, the toolbox, photo backgrounds, clipboard history and more. Most cards have a switch right on them; the rest say where the feature lives.
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Your tools (only for “show me everything” answers) — every toolbar tool, each with its own switch, plus quick “Recommended” and “Everything” buttons.
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Tool setup (only for “show me everything” answers with Calendar, Weather, or Compass enabled) — first-run choices for whichever of those you kept: alternate calendars, a saved place and temperature unit, or a qibla toggle.
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Try your keyboard — a live text field so the keyboard appears in the theme you just picked, plus two or three “try this” prompts drawn from what you enabled (type
12*8=for a smart chip, type a tool’s name for its hotword chip, open the toolbox).
What the quiz changes
Section titled “What the quiz changes”Each answer does two things: it writes a few settings there and then, and it decides which of the later pages you get. Here’s the whole mapping, so you can see what you agreed to.
How many languages do you type in?
| Answer | What it writes | What it does to the wizard |
|---|---|---|
| Just one | Both spacebar swipes (short and long) move the cursor, and the 🌐 key becomes an emoji key | Your languages is skipped, unless you already have two or more enabled |
| Two or more | Both spacebar swipes change the language, and the 🌐 key stays a language key | Your languages appears |
Neither is a one-way door: the Spacebar & keys page later offers the same choice again, with a Recommended badge on whichever one matches your answer.
What kind of keyboard do you want?
| Answer | Toolbar tools it turns on | What it does to the wizard |
|---|---|---|
| Keep it simple | Eight: emoji, GIFs, stickers, clipboard, voice typing, AI writing tools, grammar check, and the settings shortcut | The short path. No Typing feedback, no Spacebar & keys, no Your tools |
| A good middle | 21: those eight plus themes, dictionary, fancy text, translate, autocorrect, snippets, one-handed, split, text editing, handwriting, text scan, undo and redo | Adds Typing feedback and Spacebar & keys |
| Show me everything | 35: those 21 plus Wikipedia, power saving, keyboard modes, numpad, special symbols, calculator, unit converter, currency, password generator, calendar, weather, media controls, apps and hide keyboard | Adds Your tools, and Tool setup when calendar, weather or compass is among them |
A set that can’t run in full on your phone gets topped up rather than left short. If part of it isn’t available (a Lite build has no handwriting and no text scan), or the phone has no Google services, Wikipedia and power saving come in behind whatever’s missing, so a “recommended” set never quietly arrives two tools smaller.
How private should it be?
| Answer | What it writes |
|---|---|
| Standard | Nothing. The shipped defaults already are the standard behaviour |
| Extra strict | Turns off Learn from typing, Clipboard history and Count typing statistics, and adds the Incognito tool to whichever set the question above landed |
Leave the quiz alone entirely and you get the short page list, the same one “keep it simple” gets, plus the middle tool set when the wizard closes.
Switching keyboards later
Section titled “Switching keyboards later”Once WM Keyboard is set up, there are a few ways to change which keyboard is active, or which of WM Keyboard’s own languages is:
- The Home screen’s Switch keyboard button is always there, not just during setup. Tap it any time to reopen the system picker.
- Android’s own switcher notification shows up automatically, as a “select input method” notification whenever two or more keyboards are enabled on the device; tapping it opens the same system picker.
- The 🌐 key and spacebar swipes cycle between WM Keyboard’s own enabled languages. They don’t open the system keyboard picker, so they can’t switch you to a different keyboard app.
If WM Keyboard’s languages should show up individually in Android’s own switcher sheet (rather than as one generic “WM Keyboard” entry), turn on the option below; it’s on by default.
Options
Section titled “Options”- List languages in Android’s switcher (on by default) — registers each of your enabled layouts as an Android input-method subtype, so the system’s “Choose input method” sheet lists them individually and can jump straight to one. Turn it off to keep switching entirely inside the keyboard and expose no subtypes to the system.
- Show app name first (off by default, only shown while the option above is on) — prefixes each subtype’s label with “WM Keyboard ·” instead of just the language name.
- Learn from typing (on by default) — personalizes suggestions from what you type, entirely on-device.
See Privacy at a glance and the Privacy settings reference for the rest of that screen.
Running it again
Section titled “Running it again”The wizard isn’t a one-shot: WM KeyboardAboutRun setup again replays it whenever you like. A replay never rewrites your settings on its own — the quiz remembers your old answers and only changes what you actually tap — and the Welcome page stays out of the way if the keyboard is already enabled and selected. Finishing a replay drops you back on the About screen.
Details & edge cases
Section titled “Details & edge cases”- Whether the wizard appears is separate from whether the keyboard is enabled: it’s driven purely by a “have you finished onboarding” flag, not by checking Android’s input-method state. If you enable and select WM Keyboard entirely from system Settings without ever opening the app, the wizard still appears on first launch. Its Welcome page will just already show the “done” state and let you move straight past it.
- Skipping the wizard early still lands a sane tool set: finishing (or skipping) over the untouched everything-enabled default replaces it with the recommended set, or the smaller essential set if you answered “keep it simple” first.
- On a Lite build, the Tools page doesn’t offer handwriting, OCR, QR/barcode scanning, document scanning, or grammar checking as options at all, since those features aren’t built into that edition. See Full vs Lite.
- Installing over an existing WM Keyboard install (same signing key) keeps the wizard from running again:
onboardingDoneis a regular setting, so it carries over like any other. A clean reinstall or a new phone without a settings backup will show it again. See Installation for what does and doesn’t carry over.