Keyman 18.0 is now available in beta

We are excited to announce that Keyman 18.0 is officially in beta!

Keyman 18.0 beta is free to download from Keyman downloads website. You are welcome to send us any feedback on Keyman community site.

There are over 700 changes in this release, from bug fixes to small improvements through to major features. This blog lists the most significant changes in Keyman 18.0 beta. The full change log is available here.

Keyman for Windows

• Minimum supported version of Windows is 10.0
• Updates to Keyman are now applied before Keyman starts for the first time in a session, so Windows no longer needs to be restarted (#10041)
• Keyman no longer adds a desktop shortcut when it is installed (#11401)
• Added an option to make Right Alt and Right Control also work for keyboard switching hotkeys if preferred (#11471)

Keyman for macOS

• Minimum supported version of macOS is 10.13 High Sierra.
• Improved handling of Option key and how it relates to Alt key in Keyman keyboards (#12458)
• Keyman keyboards are now stored in the preferred location, /Library/Application Support, instead of /Documents (#12106)
• Removed ‘Use Verbose console Logging’ option and use Apple unified logging system instead (#12431)
• Removed ‘Always Show OSK’ option and automatically remember OSK window state instead (#12355)

Keyman for iPhone and iPad

• Minimum supported version of iOS is 13.0.
• Predictive text and on screen keyboard startup performance improvements (#11784, #11264, #11265)
• Keyboard size can now be adjusted to your preference (#12571)

Keyman for Android

• Minimum supported version of Android is 5.0 (requires minimum version of Chrome 57.0)
• ENTER key can now handle different actions such as: newline, Previous, Next, Submit, and Search. (#12125, #12315, #12473)
• New menu to adjust the the number of milliseconds (300 ms to 1500 ms) required to trigger a longpress gesture (#12170, #12185)
• Navigation arrows for back / forward actions now show correctly in right-to-left (RTL) languages (#12227)
• Predictive text and on screen keyboard startup performance improvements (#11784, #11264, #11265)

Keyman for Linux

• Minimum supported version for Ubuntu is Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy (#12003).
• Other supported versions of Ubuntu are 24.04 Noble and 24.10 Oracular.
• Keyman no longer requires a patched version of ibus as Keyman now uses a system service to manage keystroke order (#11535).
• Support for simulation of AltGr (right Alt) with Ctrl+Alt (#11852).

KeymanWeb

• Minimum supported version of Chrome is 53.0
• KeymanWeb compilation target is now ES6 rather than ES5 (#10257)
• BREAKING: Lexical-models with custom wordbreakers require a more strict adherence to the wordbreaker specification (#12200, lexical-models#265)

Keyman Developer

• Updated to Unicode 16.0 (#12393)
• Improve automatic detection of minimum Keyman version for a keyboard during compilation (#11981, #11982, #11965, #11957)
• Generate keyboards and lexical models from templates, with kmc generate (#11014)
• Clone existing keyboard and lexical model projects, both from local file system and also from any open source online Keyman keyboard in Keyman Cloud or GitHub, with kmc copy and New Project dialogs (#12555, #12586, #13076)
• Support extending existing &displaymap data files when adding new characters (#12622)
• Font settings for on screen keyboards are now kept consistent with package metadata during compilation (#12949)
• New npm module @keymanapp/langtags makes langtags.json easily accessible (#13046)
• Compiler messages now have links to additional documentation (#13156)

Keyman Core

• Groundwork underway for integration into Keyman for Android, Keyman for iOS, KeymanWeb

Keyman Engine for Android

• New API functions setLongpressDelay(), getLongpressDelay() added for adjusting longpress delay (help.keyman.com#1500, #12185)

Keyman Engine for iOS

• New API functions for setting On Screen Keyboard height (TODO)

New Localizations

• Polytonic Greek added for Android and iOS (#11877)
• Arabic added for Android (#12228)