A two-minute tour
The suggestion strip, toolbar, emoji, tools and settings: where everything lives.
WM Keyboard looks like a normal keyboard until you need more; then a toolbar, a panel, or a long-press gets you there. This page walks the layout so nothing feels hidden.
The anatomy
Section titled “The anatomy”The keyboard is built from a small set of stacked bars, plus the key area itself:
- The top bar does double duty as either the suggestion strip or the toolbar (never both at once). Before you type anything (and whenever there’s nothing to suggest), it shows the toolbar; once you have candidates, it switches to showing them instead.
- The key area fills the rest of the height with the current layout’s keys. Opening almost any tool swaps this area out for that tool’s panel. See Panels replace the keys below.
- A symbol row (a strip of quick symbols like currency or arrows, with a set picker) is available but off by default. Turn it on from WM KeyboardRows & barsSymbol row, and see Rows & bars for the full set list.
- A dedicated emoji row above the keys is also available but off by default. Switch it on from WM KeyboardEmojiEmoji row: Button adds a toolbar toggle that flips the top bar over to show emoji in place of suggestions, or Own row keeps it permanently visible. See Emoji settings for both modes.
Don’t confuse this opt-in symbol row with the ?123 key, which cycles the whole key grid to a symbols layer, or with the Symbols tool, which opens a full-screen browser of the entire Unicode symbol catalog from the toolbox. All three are covered on their own pages: Rows & bars for the row, Tools overview for the toolbox entry.
Using the toolbar
Section titled “Using the toolbar”Reading left to right, the toolbar has:
- A back arrow, shown only while a panel is open, that returns you to the keys.
- A Toolbox button (the grid icon) that opens a grid of every tool you have enabled.
- Your pinned tools: the small set of tools that live directly on the bar.
Out of the box only three tools are pinned: Emoji, Clipboard, and Settings. Everything else (GIFs, translation, the calculator, sensors, scanners, and dozens more) lives one tap away in the Toolbox grid, arranged in a 4-column layout ordered roughly by how often people reach for each tool. The Toolbox’s first-run hint explains the gesture: hold and drag a tool from the grid onto the toolbar to pin it, drag within the grid to reorder, or drag a pinned tool back down into the grid to unpin it.
During onboarding you can widen this from a “Recommended” starter set to everything, but that only changes which tools are available in the Toolbox; it does not add anything new to the pinned bar. If you want more than three tools within one tap, drag them up yourself. See Tools overview for what each one does, and WM KeyboardTools to manage the enabled set later.
Panels replace the keys
Section titled “Panels replace the keys”Tapping a tool almost always swaps the key area for that tool’s panel: the keyboard doesn’t get taller, it repurposes the space the keys were using. Some panels, like Emoji, additionally take over the toolbar row itself and use its height too, so the tool gets the keyboard’s full space; others, like Clipboard and the Toolbox, leave the toolbar in place above them so you can hop to a different tool without backing out first. Either way, a back chevron gets you to typing again, whether in the toolbar itself for panels that keep it, or in the panel’s own header when the toolbar has stepped aside.
Long-press for more
Section titled “Long-press for more”Long-press is the keyboard’s “there’s more here” gesture in a few different places:
- Keys with alternates (most letters, and some punctuation) pop up a row of accented or related characters on long-press. A small corner mark hints which keys have alternates; you can turn that hint off from Key press settings.
- The globe key cycles to your next enabled layout on a tap; long-press it instead to jump straight to the full language picker.
- Toolbar tools respond to three different holds: a tap runs the tool, a hold that doesn’t move opens that tool’s own settings page, and a hold that then drags picks the tool up to reorder, pin, or unpin it.
- Emoji open a popup of skin-tone and gender variants on long-press, along with the emoji’s name and a favorite toggle.
?123 can optionally open a numeric keypad on long-press instead of just switching layers, and letter keys can optionally get long-press shortcuts for select-all, copy, paste, cut, undo, and redo. Both are off by default, so turn them on under WM KeyboardKey press if you want them.
Getting to settings
Section titled “Getting to settings”
There are three ways to reach the settings app from the keyboard itself:
- Tap the Settings tool (pinned by default) to open the settings app at its home screen.
- Long-press any tool, pinned or in the Toolbox, to jump straight to that tool’s own settings page instead of the home screen.
- Tap a gear or settings icon inside a panel (Themes, Weather, Snippets, and a few others have one) to land directly on that section.
The settings app map
Section titled “The settings app map”The settings app is a flat list of screens, one per section, grouped into six clusters on the home screen:
- Typing — Typing, Key press, Languages
- Keyboard — Appearance, Layout & size, Key layouts, Rows & bars, Keyboard modes
- Features — Emoji, Tools, Addons
- Accessibility — Accessibility
- Data — Privacy, Backup & restore
- About — About
Each screen is just a title and a back button: there’s no deep nesting to get lost in. Every section here has a matching reference page under Reference → Settings with the exact options and defaults; this tour only covers where things live, not every switch.
Handwriting, OCR, QR/document scanning, and grammar checking need on-device ML models that only ship in the full build Full edition only; everything else on this tour, including every pinned tool, the toolbox, and every settings section, is available in both editions All editions. See Editions for the full comparison.