Uniboard

Help & support

Find your character.
Make it yours.

Uniboard is a Unicode and emoji keyboard for iOS and iPadOS 17 or later. The interface, character and emoji names, and descriptive annotations are in English.

Enable the Unicode keyboard

  1. Open Settings → General → Keyboard → Keyboards.
  2. Choose Add New Keyboard… → Uniboard.
  3. You can leave Allow Full Access off for Direct Typing, offline search and text inspection. Downloaded Japanese and Mandarin, and clipboard actions in the keyboard, need Full Access; see below.
  4. In a text field, hold the globe key and select Uniboard.
  5. Tap U to open search, use the search letter and number keys, then tap a result to insert its original character or emoji sequence into your text. Tap U again to close search.

To try it inside the app, open Settings → Try Your Keyboard, tap the editor, then select Uniboard with the globe key.

Search examples

A bare hexadecimal query must include a digit. For a letters-only code point, use a prefix, such as U+FACE. See the Unicode search guide for more examples.

Browse emoji and choose a Unicode version

Open Emojis to find complete sequences, including joined emoji, skin tones, flags and keycaps. Searching head shaking horizontally finds a sequence containing a smiley, a joiner, an arrow and a variation selector. One tap on the keyboard inserts the entire sequence.

The latest Unicode release is the default. In the app’s Unicode settings, you can also choose either of the two previous releases or the development draft. These editions work offline, and the edition setting applies to both the app and keyboard. Newest first orders characters by official Unicode Age and emoji by their Emoji introduction version. You can also choose Oldest first or Code point.

Inspect before you insert

Hold a character or emoji key, or keep a pointer over it, to open a scrollable properties panel without insertion. Read the name, description, code points, Unicode age, category, UTF-8 bytes and other available properties; emoji also show their component names. Choose Back to return, or Save to keep a favorite.

The top-right backspace edits text in the app you are typing into, even while search is open. The lower backspace on the search keys edits only your query. Hold either backspace to repeat deletion in its own destination.

Type a search key without changing your query

Tap a search letter, digit or punctuation key to edit the query. Hold that key for 0.4 seconds to insert its displayed character into your text once, leaving the query unchanged. Releasing it does not insert again. This is different from holding a result tile, which opens its properties.

Type Japanese and Mandarin

Type romaji and choose Japanese text. Type pinyin and choose Simplified Chinese words. Conversion happens on your device, using language data you download in the app.

  1. In Uniboard, open Settings → Languages.
  2. Choose Japanese — Romaji or Mandarin Chinese — Pinyin. Check the download size, source and license, then tap Download. The app, not the keyboard, downloads and checks the files.
  3. Turn on Use in Keyboard. Downloading alone does not add the language to the keyboard.
  4. Open Settings → General → Keyboard → Keyboards → Uniboard and turn on Allow Full Access. See below for why.
  5. In a text field, hold Space on the Uniboard keyboard and choose 日本語 or 拼音.

Japanese turns romaji into kana and kanji: type nihongo to see にほんご and 日本語. Mandarin looks up Simplified Chinese vocabulary from pinyin: type nihao to see 你好. Traditional Chinese is not available.

To remove a language, open it in Settings → Languages and tap Remove Download. My Words stays. Files the keyboard is still using may be kept until it releases them, so space may not free up immediately. Language downloads can be included in device backups.

Full Access for downloaded languages

Downloaded languages need Full Access so the keyboard can read the language files shared by the app. That is the only reason. Full Access is not used to send your typing anywhere, and conversion stays on your device.

Without Full Access, the keyboard offers Direct Typing only. Direct Typing works as usual, so you can keep typing with Full Access off.

Choose what to insert

As you type, choices appear above the keys. Your typed spelling comes first: tap it to insert exactly what you typed. Tap any other choice to insert it instead.

Tap the down arrow (More Choices) to see every choice. Tap ✕ to close the list; your unfinished input stays, ready to finish. Tap Cancel Conversion to clear the unfinished input. Nothing is inserted, and text already in the field stays as it was.

Add your own words

My Words offers your own text as a choice when you type its reading. Uniboard inserts it exactly as saved, including accents, emoji sequences and other Unicode characters. An output such as 👩🏽‍💻é goes in unchanged.

  1. Open Settings → My Words and tap Add Dictionary. If you already have one, tap + and choose New Dictionary. Choose its input mode.
  2. Open the dictionary and tap Add Entry (+). Enter the Reading you type and the Output to offer.
  3. Turn on Use in Keyboard. New dictionaries start off. Japanese and Mandarin dictionaries also need that language downloaded and turned on in Languages.

To import, tap + in My Words, choose Import Dictionary, then choose a UTF-8 .tsv or .txt file. Put one entry on each line: reading, a tab, then output. An optional third column sets a weight from 0 to 10000. Review the entries, then import. Each import creates a separate dictionary, so your existing words stay as they are.

Changed your mind? Tap Undo Import while it is available. It removes the dictionary created by the last import. Edits made after that import are not rolled back. Undo Import undoes a dictionary import, not your typing.

To keep a copy, open a dictionary, tap ⋯ and choose Export Dictionary. Exports can contain personal text, so check the file before you share it. Removing a dictionary in the app does not erase copies you saved elsewhere.

A character looks like a box or dotted circle

The fonts on your iOS version may not include the glyph, and a complete emoji may render as several symbols. Hold or hover to read the name, description and properties even when the glyph is missing. A dotted circle helps show a combining mark; invisible-character markers are preview aids. Copying or inserting uses only the original scalar or complete emoji sequence.

Preview fonts and font rules

In Settings → Font Downloads, add a local font file or download a font. The font catalog and name search run on your device. When you choose a download, Uniboard requests the selected font file from GitHub or, for available individual styles, Google’s fonts.gstatic.com. Downloads need an internet connection. No account is needed, and your typing, inspected text, favorites and configuration are not sent with the font request. Fonts are used locally by Uniboard, not installed system-wide, and other apps still choose their own fonts.

Turn on Extra Unicode Fonts to use preview fonts and font rules; it is off by default. In Settings → Font Rules, assign fonts to a code point, range or Unicode block. Code-point rules take priority over ranges, and narrower ranges over broader ones, followed by block rules. If a font is unavailable or cannot draw the text, Uniboard falls back to another matching font or its defaults. These preview settings apply to the app and keyboard without Full Access and do not change inserted text.

Font removal depends on where the font is stored. Removing an optional Unicode or emoji font pack deletes its downloaded files when removal succeeds, and Uniboard requests that iOS exclude those packs from backups. Google Fonts downloads and added custom fonts use a separate library: Remove stops using that entry but retains old file bytes for safe app and keyboard reads, so it does not immediately free disk space. That library has no backup-exclusion setting; backups may include its files. Other font entries are kept.

Copy the preview as an image

Use Copy Image to keep the preview’s appearance as a PNG. Choose text and background colors, including a transparent background, and a 1×, 2× or 3× scale. Copying from the keyboard requires Full Access. The picture is not editable text and can only be pasted where the receiving app accepts images.

Inspect the text preview

Enable Settings → Text Preview, then choose Inspect Text in the keyboard preview. It freezes and analyzes only the shown excerpt of text made available by the app you are typing into—not the whole document. See grapheme-cluster, code-point and UTF-16 counts, character details and normalization information. Inspection is local and read-only: it does not rewrite your text or send the excerpt to a server, and closing the panel clears its snapshot.

Inspection and typing work without Full Access. The inspector can copy the original text, code-point labels, available NFC, NFD, NFKC and NFKD normalized text, or UTF-8 and UTF-16 hexadecimal text—not binary data. These actions write to the clipboard only when you choose them and require Full Access in the keyboard.

Save or replace your configuration

Open Settings → Configuration to export a TOML file or import one from Files. Exports include settings, layouts, pages, favorites, custom key text, font references and rules, enabled language modes, language preferences, references identifying language downloads, and Copy Image options. Favorites and custom key text may be personal: check the file before sharing. My Words, language dictionary files, typing history, scratchpad text and font files are not included. To keep My Words, use Export Dictionary. Copy Image colors and scale chosen in the keyboard without Full Access are also excluded. Your chosen Files or sharing destination may store or cloud-sync the file under its own rules.

Imports are validated for review before you confirm Replace Configuration. This replaces rather than merges: missing sections reset to defaults. Fonts are not downloaded automatically; unavailable-font rules are kept and use fallback fonts. Undo Last Configuration Change restores the locally saved configuration from before the last import or editor apply, replacing changes made since then too.

To edit directly, open Settings → Configuration → Edit Configuration and edit the TOML text. Validate checks it without changing your configuration. Apply validates again and opens a review; review the changes and warnings, then confirm to replace your configuration. Missing sections reset to defaults, just as with imports. The draft stays in memory on your device and is not saved for reopening. Cancel and choose Discard Edits to leave without applying.

The keyboard is unavailable in a text field

iOS uses its own keyboard for password and phone-number fields. Some apps also disallow custom keyboards. In those cases, copy a character from Uniboard and paste it where the other app permits.

Pages, favorites and Full Access

The former Pages tab is now Keyboard. Use Main Keyboard for letters and numbers, and Symbol Keys for the 123 and #+= keyboards. Customize Keys is no longer in Settings.

Pages and favorites you set up in the app reach the keyboard through local shared storage, even without Full Access. Favorites saved in the keyboard write back to the app with Full Access; without it, those changes remain pending locally. Recently Used stays separate. This is on-device sharing, not an Uniboard cloud-sync service.

Full Access also lets the keyboard read downloaded Japanese and Mandarin language files, and enables the keyboard’s clipboard actions and light haptics on supported iPhones. It is not required for Direct Typing, offline search, preview fonts or read-only text inspection.

Contact Kitta Ltd

For help, include your iOS version, device model, the code point or search you tried, and what happened. Avoid sending private documents, passwords or other sensitive typing.

Email Kitta support

For questions about personal data, see the privacy policy.