Microsoft SwiftKey AI Keyboard

SwiftKey Review: Predictions Stay on the Phone, Usage Data Does Not

No Paid Tier Since 2016: Five Languages on Android, Two on iPhone

The last premium themes went free in December 2016, months after Microsoft bought SwiftKey for a reported $250 million, and the App Store still lists themes as in-app purchases priced at $0.00. The real split is between platforms. Android covers more than 700 languages with up to five active at once, detected as you type; the iPhone version caps you at two. Incognito mode, which stops learning and turns the keys black, exists only on Android, and Microsoft's own voice typing recognises English only. Unpinned clipboard clips vanish after an hour, and iOS keeps at most 30 of them at 1,000 characters each. Google Play still labels the listing Contains ads.

What Leaves the Phone: Snippets, Telemetry and the Advertising ID

By default the language model lives on the device, and Microsoft says it learns nothing from password fields or long numbers such as card numbers. Sharing typing snippets, short phrases with keypress and correction data, is a separate opt-in under Privacy > Help Microsoft improve. The quieter stream is telemetry. When Trinity College Dublin researchers decrypted traffic from version 7.8.3.5 on a Pixel 2 in April 2022, each typing session was logged with the app name, duration and counts of predicted versus typed words, alongside the Google advertising ID, even after setup consent was refused. No typed text appeared. In the same tests Gboard offered an opt-out and the open-source AnySoftKeyboard sent nothing. Microsoft's September 2026 privacy statement calls device and usage collection opt-in; we have not re-tested the current build.

OneDrive Replaced SwiftKey Accounts on May 31, 2026

Backup now runs only through a Microsoft account: standalone SwiftKey accounts, including Google and Apple sign-ins, were retired on May 31, 2026, and data left in them was set for deletion. What syncs is a readable list of learned words plus the typing model, kept in OneDrive's Apps > SwiftKey folder, where you can delete it. Voice typing sends audio to Microsoft's speech service, and the Bing search button passes queries, IP address and location to Bing. Sync has misfired publicly before: in July 2016 strangers' email addresses and phone numbers surfaced as predictions, and cloud sync was switched off. Play's Data safety card declares no third-party sharing but lists location and search history among data used for advertising.

Copilot Left in 2025; September 2026 Updates Brought Freeze Reports

A Microsoft support FAQ dated February 2025 says the Copilot chat and Compose integrations were removed, leaving Editor, which proofreads grammar and punctuation once you have typed three words. The Play description still advertises both. Reliability is the bigger worry: late-September 2026 reviews in English, Spanish and Portuguese describe the keyboard failing to appear or freezing after the mid-month updates, and Microsoft's replies prescribe clearing the cache. Of the 150 English reviews Google ranks most relevant, written between September 2024 and September 2026, 70 give one or two stars, most often over predictions and autocorrect. Microsoft has also told reviewers that the prediction bar cannot be hidden and that copies preinstalled by phone makers cannot be fully uninstalled.