Price/Platform: Free (iOS)
Review Version: 1.1
Developer Website: http://www.myscript.com/technology/technical-demonstrations/
Features: MyScript Stylus is a third party keyboard that utilizes handwriting recognition. The app uses MyScript’s text recognition engine to instantly convert your handwriting into text and is used to showcase the companies core technology. The app supports 14 languages by default and additional 39 upon granting full access mode!
To get started with the app, just enable it via the setting’s app, and pick it as your keyboard! When the keyboard appears, you will see the input area appear! Just start writing (or scribbling?) along the dashed line and the app will convert your writing into text. The app can recognize both cursive and print, and will auto-advance/scroll to make sure you have room to write. After the app recognizes your writing, it will be converted to print form in the input screen. You can use two fingers to scroll back and forth to see your text.
In addition to recognizing your writing, the app also supports a variety of gestures to assist in your writing and editing! You can strikethrough or scratch/scribble to delete a letter or word, write over a word to replace it, and a few other gestures to assist in splitting and joining words/letters. You can see a cheat sheet of all of the gestures by pressing the little “I” button within the keyboard or by going into the app’s help section. If gestures aren’t your thing, there are buttons for delete, return and space.
Finally, you can customize certain aspects of the keyboard’s appearance. The app allows you to choose between a light and dark theme, ink thickness, baseline position and auto-scrolling speed. You will, however, have to enable full access mode to see these changes take effect. All of these settings can be adjusted within the app itself.
Summary: MyScript Stylus is a keyboard that uses handwriting recognition and swipe gestures allowing you to quickly and easily input either print or cursive writing.
Pro:
- Quick and Responsive Handwriting recognition
- Can adjust color of input screen and thickness of ink
- Swipe Gestures are very intuitive
Con:
- Hard to edit long sentences (Requires a lot of scrolling)
- If you write in cursive, the screen doesn’t auto-advance
How I use it: MyScript Stylus is the only third party keyboard I use constantly! I love being able to input text, numbers and symbols via writing- it tends to be much easier then tapping through the onscreen keyboard! I have found that the MyScript engine really is quite good, and can even recognize my print/cursive hybrid writing with no problem at all. There are two main situations that I use this app for:
- Text Processing App: Sometimes taking notes in an app like Word or Pages is advantageous over an app like Notes Plus or Notabilty. In this case, I use this keyboard so that I can take advantage of the speed and cognitive processing of handwriting with the convenience or formatting of the app. In a sense, you can almost give any app “handwriting” abilities with this keyboard.
- Visual Typing: Sometimes typing is visually taxing, especially if you have to look down at the keyboard often. I like to use this app as an alternative to typing as I can usually write faster (it Is quite good at recognizing scribbles) and I can write without looking. It is much easier on my eyes and brain. (I could also learn how to type really well too…)
Tech For TBI's 