Until now, using a third-party touch keyboard on the iPhone meant giving up convenient access to voice dictation. To translate speech to text, you had to switch back to Apple’s own keyboard.
Google now has a workaround in its free Gboard keyboard for iOS: Long-pressing the space bar opens a voice prompt within the Gboard app, and anything you say gets copied back into the text field. This isn’t as slick as Apple’s built-in dictation, as it temporarily removes you from whatever app you were using, but it’s better than nothing if you can’t live without Google’s gesture-driven keyboard or built-in search features. Here’s hoping Microsoft’s Word Flow and Nuance’s Swype follow along.JN