Languages

Add a language

Settings path: Home › Languages

In the language picker, expand the arrow beside Library to reveal Search. A search includes available languages from Official and all added repositories, regardless of the selected source. Languages you already use are omitted. Clear Search to return to the selected source.

1. Open Languages.
2. Find the language in the list and switch it on.
3. Let its resources finish downloading. After that it works with no connection at all.

Pick the languages you type in. Suggestions, autocomplete, and autocorrect run in all of them at once, so a word only gets fixed when it's wrong in every one. Want Spanish and English together? Turn both on. Only languages your device can spell-check show up here. Your key layout (QWERTY, AZERTY…) is set separately.

Language switch

Two ways, and both stay on the keyboard: the language button on the suggestion bar, and a swipe up on the Return key. The keys change with the language.

The language button on the suggestion bar is optional. Turn it off if you only type in one language and would rather have the room.

• Language button
• Language Mode

Arrangement

A layout belongs to the language that types on it, so you change it inside the language.

Dvorak, Colemak and the non-Latin arrangements are in the same list.

For Xiaohe double pinyin (小鹤双拼), choose Chinese (Simplified Xiaohe Double Pinyin) or Chinese (Traditional Xiaohe Double Pinyin) as your Chinese language’s arrangement. Both use familiar QWERTY keys. Type two keys per syllable: for example, ul represents shuang and vsgo represents zhong guo, offering 中国 or 中國 according to the arrangement.

Tap a candidate to convert it, or press Space to accept the leading candidate. Choosing a word at the start of a longer reading leaves the rest ready to convert. Backspace removes one key press, including half of a two-key pair. Return keeps the literal letters you typed. Use individual taps for Xiaohe; continuous swipe conversion is not supported on these arrangements. This is the phonetic Xiaohe double-pinyin scheme, without the additional character-shape codes used by Xiaohe Yinxing.

T9 arrangements use a compact letter grid with four reading choices at a time in the left column and word suggestions across the top. Scroll the left column for more choices; when no reading is active, it shows punctuation in the same column. On Simplified and Traditional Chinese Pinyin 12-Key, tap a Pinyin spelling or initial on the left to narrow the Chinese candidates without committing them. The in-app keyboard preview also lets you try these Pinyin choices and select Chinese words. With Swipe Typing enabled, you can also glide across the Chinese T9 letter groups, lifting between syllables. Each glide adds to the Pinyin reading, and you choose the Chinese words from the suggestions above. Letters that share a key can come from one visit to that key; the Fuzzy Pinyin setting also applies to these glides. On other T9 arrangements, choose an exact letter to narrow the word suggestions. Delete removes the last press; Clear removes only the reading you are composing. Number and symbol pages remain available, and layouts you have customized keep their own arrangement.

For Japanese, choose QWERTY or Japanese (Romaji) to type with romaji: a becomes あ, ka becomes か, and shi becomes し. Copies you make by editing or duplicating QWERTY keep Japanese input when Japanese is selected. Switch to your English language to type English on the same arrangement. Kana input works without a downloaded pack; a Japanese language pack adds kanji candidates. You can also choose Japanese (12-Key Kana) for flick input.

1. Open Languages and tap the language you want to change.
2. Pick its arrangement. It belongs to that language, so your English can stay on QWERTY while your French sits on AZERTY.

Vietnamese input

Choose Telex, VNI or VIQR from the Vietnamese language card. Android test builds also expose these input methods, Teencode spelling and the optional w → ư shortcut on the Vietnamese card. Composition runs when Vietnamese is the only active typing language. If you also use English, choose separate language mode and switch to Vietnamese; combined language mode leaves keys literal.

Telex uses s/f/r/x/j for tones, aa/ee/oo for circumflexes, dd for đ and w for horns or a breve. In the Vietnamese input menu, enable w → ư to type ư with one key: w → ư, tw → tư and nhw → như. It is off by default. A second w cancels the shortcut: ww → w; explicit uw still cancels as uww → uw.

Telex letter modifiers can follow the syllable: aysa → ấy and quanfa → quần. Adding an invalid extra letter preserves the accents already on screen, so quần followed by d stays quầnd and người followed by b stays ngườib. Delete the stray letter to continue composing the original syllable.

Teencode spelling accepts chat forms such as zui zẻ, kó, bíe, thík, gòy and ừk. Leave w → ư off to use initial w as a chat consonant: was → wá. Enabling the shortcut gives w its ư meaning, while the other chat spellings remain available. With both switches off, was, war, worse, wore and zoo remain literal.

VNI uses 1–5 for tones, 6 for circumflexes, 7 for horns, 8 for the breve and 9 for đ. VIQR uses apostrophe, grave accent, question mark, tilde and period for tones, ^ for circumflexes, + for horns, ( for the breve and dd for đ. Both accept marks after the syllable and preserve an existing tone when a vowel mark is added: VNI tieng61 → tiếng and a16 → ấ; VIQR tieng^' → tiếng and a'^ → ấ.

A repeated modifier cancels its mark and types the modifier literally, such as VNI a66 → a6 and VIQR a^^ → a^. In VNI and VIQR, 0 clears a tone. In VIQR, press backslash before a modifier to type it literally: a + backslash + ? → a?. Tone placement follows the syllable as letters are added. Open uơ stays open in thuở; a coda or offglide forms the paired horns in thường or người. The in-app keyboard preview uses the same composition rules.

Language packs

Settings path: Home › Languages › Language packs

A language pack is the vocabulary and the model behind the guesses. Installed packs work offline, and the rest download when you ask for them.

In Add language and during setup, the sparkle badge identifies languages with a neural model, including packs available to download. It is not exclusive to English. Stars appear when training information is available and indicate how much text the model was trained on; a sparkle without stars still means neural support. Installed languages keep their badge when you are offline or a pack update is available.

• Installed
• Not downloaded
• Check for language-pack updates

Chinese Pinyin sentence conversion uses a separate word-and-bigram model. A neural model in a language pack does not rerank Pinyin compositions. When a stored phrase can be split into two known words of at least two characters each, the decoder can use the final word’s context to support the next choice. Different segmentations of the same sentence share one visible candidate slot, leaving room for other sentences and partial conversions.

In Chinese Pinyin, you can type v for ü. Both xuyao and xvyao convert to 需要. The j, q and x initials also accept v in the ue, uan and un finals, such as jve, qvan and xvn. These spellings work with fuzzy Pinyin turned off. Keep using nv and lv for nü and lü: nu and lu remain different syllables.

Custom languages

Made up a language? Describe it here and Clink will predict, correct and lay out keys for it like any other. Bring a word list to teach it vocabulary.

Bring a word list for a language Clink doesn’t ship, or add extra vocabulary to one it does. The file stays on this device.

In Hold a key for, the base can be a whole letter cluster such as hrr, with space-separated alternatives. Add a key that types that cluster in your custom layout to use the mapping. You can also author alternatives directly on that key’s Hold tab.

Give a custom language a flag

Settings path: Home › Languages › Custom languages

A language Clink ships shows its country's flag on the Languages screen and on the language key. A custom language has no country, so it shows its emblem instead: the single character beside its name. Make that emblem a country's flag emoji and Clink draws its own flag for that country everywhere the language appears. Android test builds use the same bundled flag artwork on language cards, in language pickers and in the keyboard's Translate controls; the flag design does not depend on the phone's emoji font.

1. Open Languages, then Custom languages, and tap your language.
2. Tap the box beside its name and type or paste the country's flag emoji, for example 🇵🇭 for the Philippines.
3. Tap Save. The flag appears on the language card, in the language switcher and on the language key.

App language

It's separate from what you type in, so the app can be in one language while the keyboard writes another.

App language is at the top of the Languages screen, and changing it leaves what you type in exactly where it was. Installed and downloadable official app languages appear together in one list. Choose a language to use it; Clink tries to download its translation first if needed. App and translation releases can differ: an older pack still translates the text it knows, and missing text stays in English. If an official pack is not available yet, Clink remembers your language and retries when the app returns to the foreground. Installed translations remain usable offline. Automatic follows your iPhone's language. Added community repositories have their own source tabs.