Gboard 6.7 beta adds Chinese, Japanese support in possible keyboard app consolidation

Abner Li | Oct 26 2017 - 11:36 am PT

While updates to Gboard usually bring a string of new features, the latest version is rather light on visible changes. However, Gboard in version 6.7 does add support for several Asian languages, including Chinese and Japanese.

While Google has been pushing Gboard as Android’s main keyboard app for several months now, there are some notable scenarios where this is not yet possible. In particular, those who communicate with certain Asian languages still have to rely on language-specific versions of the older Google Keyboard app.

As a result, it lacks such convenient features as quick Google searching, GIF search, stickers, and more extensive theming.

However, Google might be consolidating those desperate apps into Gboard with version 6.7. A quick glance through the recently redesigned Languages page reveals several notable additions. Chinese is now available in Cantonese, Simplified, and Traditional, while Japanese has also been added.

At the moment, we have not been able to spot the ability to handwrite characters, but a teardown of version 6.7 notes that it might not yet be activated:

<bool name=”pref_key_value_enable_handwriting_ime”>false</bool>

For languages that have multiple variants, Gboard opens a dedicated page for users to choose. Meanwhile, this version slightly redesigns the layout of the add/cancel buttons at the bottom of the keyboard page.

: Gboard 6.6

: Gboard 6.7

Version 6.7 will be in beta for several more weeks before it hits the stable channel. At that time, Google will likely provide a full list of the new languages supported by Gboard.