Google’s new keyboard brings the keys to you.
There are 29 keys on each belt, so 116 in all. Because they come to you, google Japan has a new keyboard out, and this time you don’t go hunting for the keys. Capital and small letters get their own keys too, which means you never have to touch Shift.
The idea, Google says, is to make one-handed typing easier. The company even calls it a “Copernican revolution” in typing, and says you can build a second one if you want to type with both hands. “Kurukuru” loosely means spinning round and round in Japanese, which pretty much sums it up.
The Gboard Kurukuru Version puts its keys on four little conveyor belts that keep rolling, and you simply tap the letter you want when it slides under your finger. If you’re worried about timing your taps, a voice calls out each key as it reaches a set point. Feeling confident? There’s a speed mode that spins the belts faster. And if you miss your letter, well, you wait for it to come back around. It plays a lot like a rhythm game. On a normal keyboard your hand has to move around to find the keys, and that gets tiring fast with one hand, let alone one finger. Here the keys do the moving, so your other hand is free for the mouse or, as Google puts it, a cup of tea.
This is the 15th keyboard Google Japan has dreamt up for October 1, a tradition that took over from its April Fools’ jokes in 2021. The date is a little joke of its own, since 10/1 reads as 101, as in the old 101-key keyboard.
Google says faster belts, longer and portable versions, and more colours could be next, so the wait for your next letter might get a bit shorter. As you’d expect, there’s no buy option for this one. Google has instead put the whole design up on GitHub as an open-source project, so if you’ve got the parts and the patience, you can build one at home. You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.
Before this, we got the extra-long Gboard Bar, the wearable Gboard Caps and last year’s Gboard Dial, which had you typing like you were dialling a rotary phone.