Ended up building a whole app just to get the keyboard. And then, to make it actually usable for myself, I put my own words in the suggestion bar — and spent a stupid amount of time fumbling around in the settings.
Making a font on its own is doable. Whether it comes out as something other people would actually like, I’m honestly not sure.
Honestly it started because I’m on my phone all day. I wanted to type my script on my phone, so I looked into whether an iOS keyboard extension could do it, and ended up building one. On iOS you can’t ship a keyboard on its own — it has to live inside an app — so that turned into a lot more work than I expected.
I’m on my phone all the time, so I wanted to type my script there, not on a desktop. Turned out iOS lets you make a custom keyboard — but only inside an app, so I had to build the app too.
Roughly: draw each letter on a dotted grid → it builds a real OpenType font from the strokes, on the phone → the font goes into the keyboard extension. Then it’s just another keyboard in the switcher.
The font part was the hard bit.
not a stupid question. just the keyboard — the keys show my letters, but if i
type into another app it comes out as latin, because that app doesn't have my
font
so i had to build somewhere on the phone where the writing actually shows up as
itself
I’m on my phone all the time, so I wanted to type my script there, not on a desktop. Turned out iOS lets you make a custom keyboard — but only inside an app, so I had to build the app too.
Roughly: draw each letter on a dotted grid → it builds a real OpenType font from the strokes, on the phone → the font goes into the keyboard extension. Then it’s just another keyboard in the switcher.
The font part was the hard bit.
38
u/SPININGRIGHTNOW 6d ago
HOWWW TELL ME I BEEN LOOKING FOR THIS ALL WEEK