Update: see the latest version of the roadmap

This is an update from our last Roadmap blog post in March 2022.

Please share any feedback you have on this post on our Community Forum.

Older versions of the roadmap

• May 2018
• October 2018
• February 2019
• November 2019
• March 2020
• March 2022

Get Involved

We need your help! We may have a larger team that in earlier years, but there is much work to do! Please take a look at our Getting Involved pages for how you can help make Keyman work better for you, your language community and others:

• Make a donation
• Create a keyboard layout for your language
• Localize Keyman for your language
• Support other users
• Test a new version
• Write some code
• Improve the documentation
• Join the team!

We still have the same three current skillsets where we are currently seeking software developers and writers:

• Typescript developer
• iOS or macOS developer
• Technical writer

If you have skills in any of these areas and think you’d like to get involved, please get in touch!

The Roadmap

The Keyman team met in Siem Reap, Cambodia in December 2022 just prior to the release of Keyman 16.0.

Last update, we said we were aiming for quarterly releases. This did not happen, for a number of reasons — primarily that we had some rocky periods with various team members unavailable for significant periods of time. So we have eased back on this goal for now, as we continue to try and maintain traction on getting functionality completed, and reducing bugs and issues.

16.0 included gesture design support, but the gesture implementation on mobile devices has slipped to 17.0. Wayland work for Linux continues, as does consolidation of the On Screen Keyboard.

17.0 – Gestures, LDML keyboard on desktops, and more

Gestures will add enhanced support for flick, double-tap and long-press gestures. We hope to also improve multi-finger gestures such as shift+letter, by switching layers immediately on touch down on modifier keys. Swipe left and right on spacebar may also make it in for faster language switching.

Keyman 17.0 will include support for the upcoming LDML keyboard standard for desktop devices, and some development and design tools.

On macOS, we are replacing the existing, legacy .kmx core with the cross-platform Keyman Core, bringing it in line with Windows and Linux platforms.

Improved mnemonic layout support on Linux and macOS continues to be on our agenda, along with improved Wayland support on Linux. On Windows, we are investigating ways of streamlining the online update process.

Keyman Developer will include tooling to support single-keyboard repositories and “invisible” git integration, reducing one of the biggest friction points for keyboard developers.

18.0 – On Screen Keyboard refresh and LDML keyboard basics

We now aim to complete a significant rework of On Screen Keyboard support in version 18.0, for all platforms. This includes styling, themes, consistency across platforms, and more ways to present characters on key caps.

LDML keyboard editor tools in Keyman Developer and LDML keyboard functionality inside Keyman on touch platforms are additional features that we want to include in this version.

19.0 – Predictive Text – morphological models, phrases, and learning

We plan to focus on predictive text in version 19. Our target areas are morphological models, phrase support, and some basic learning algorithms.

Additionally, we will be working on deprecating the legacy Keyman for Web engine, and replacing it with the cross-platform Keyman Core.

We have many other smaller items on our schedule – you can track our progress (and contribute yourself!) on GitHub. Each issue and change (known as a “pull request” in GitHub) is tagged with a milestone that corresponds to a two-week “sprint”, or with a major release number. These plans are of course all still subject to change!

We are currently planning to meet again and refresh this roadmap in September 2023.

Thank you for reading! We’d love to hear your feedback on our Community Forum, both on our plans, and in terms of suggested features and changes.