VSKS Keyboard

The best Lithuanian keyboard for your phone.

iOS App

Productivity

Localization

3,000+ users

Launched January 2019

Overview

For 3 million Lithuanian speakers worldwide, typing on iOS has always felt like an afterthought. Special characters buried behind long-press menus. Autocorrect that mangles Lithuanian grammar. A keyboard designed in Cupertino for English, with Lithuanian bolted on as a second thought.

VSKS Keyboard fixes this. It's a purpose-built Lithuanian keyboard for iOS with an optimized layout, a custom language model, and the native feel Apple should have shipped from day one.

The Challenge

Apple's default keyboard handles Lithuanian technically — you can type the characters. But "technically works" and "feels right" are miles apart. For a language with nine special characters used in everyday words, accessibility isn't a nice-to-have. We needed to:

• Make every Lithuanian character reachable with a single, natural gesture
• Build autocorrect that actually understands Lithuanian grammar and idioms
• Match iOS system keyboard responsiveness so it feels native, not third-party

Technical Stack

• Platform: Native iOS Keyboard Extension
• Language: Swift
• Predictions: Custom language model trained on Lithuanian text

Key Features

Every Character, One Gesture Away

All nine Lithuanian characters (ą, č, ę, ė, į, š, ų, ū, ž) accessible through a single long-press — positioned exactly where your thumb expects them.

Autocorrect That Speaks Lithuanian

A custom language model trained on Lithuanian text. Predictions that understand declensions, conjugations, and the phrases people actually type — not translations from English.

Indistinguishable from Native

Designed to match iOS system keyboard behavior in every detail — animation, haptics, layout. Users forget it's a third-party keyboard.

Results

Featured by Apple in Lithuania. Over 3,000 daily users — a remarkable penetration for a language with a small global speaker base. The word that comes up most in reviews: "finally."

Lessons Learned

1. Keyboard extensions are hostile territory: iOS imposes brutal memory and CPU limits — engineering within those constraints is the real challenge
2. Trust is the product: keyboards see every password, every message — earning user trust requires transparency and restraint
3. Small markets breed fierce loyalty: serve an underserved community well, and they'll never leave you