
Hey everyone 👋
I want to share something I've been working on: Nova Keyboard AI — an iOS keyboard extension with AI features, built with SwiftUI.
I'll be honest from the start: I built this with significant help from AI tools. I'm not a professional developer, but I had an idea for a keyboard that could rewrite text, translate, and fix spelling — all from a simple swipe gesture. AI helped me turn that idea into working code, and I learned a lot along the way.
What it does:
- Swipe Up → AI Tone Shift (rewrite as Professional, Casual, Friendly, or Creative)
- Swipe Down → AI Translation (13+ languages)
- Swipe Left → AI Spell Check (language-aware, won't mix languages)
- Space Bar Drag → Cursor control
- Long Press → Accent/alternate characters
- Full emoji grid, text shortcuts, customizable sizing
- Dark & Light mode support
It uses the Groq API (Llama 3.3 70B) with a "bring your own key" approach — your key stays on your device, no data collection, no analytics.
What I know isn't perfect:
- There might be edge cases I haven't caught — text replacement during async AI calls can sometimes be tricky
- The keyboard is SwiftUI-based, which isn't the most common approach for keyboard extensions
- Performance is good but I'm sure there's room for improvement
- I'm still learning, so the code might not follow every best practice
Why I'm sharing:
I believe in learning in public. This project taught me a lot about iOS development, keyboard extensions, and working with AI APIs. Instead of waiting until it's "perfect" (it never would be), I'm putting it out there.
If you try it and find bugs, please let me know. If you have suggestions, I'm all ears. If you want to contribute, PRs are welcome.
Links:
- 🔗 GitHub: https://github.com/Son3ra1n/NovaKeyboardAI
- 📦 Download (.tipa): https://github.com/Son3ra1n/NovaKeyboardAI/releases/tag/v1.0.0
- 📄 License: MIT (fully open source)
Install:
- Download the
.tipafrom Releases - Install via TrollStore
- Settings → General → Keyboard → Add New Keyboard → Nova Keyboard AI
- Enable Full Access (required for AI features)
- Open the app, paste your free Groq API key, done!
Thanks for reading. Any feedback — positive or negative — means a lot to me. 🙏