Gboard's Latest Update Removes the Period and Comma Keys on Android (9to5google.com)
- Reference: 0179857086
- News link: https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/10/23/1432213/gboards-latest-update-removes-the-period-and-comma-keys-on-android
- Source link: https://9to5google.com/2025/10/21/gboard-period-comma-keys/
> Gboard has introduced some significant changes to the app over the past few weeks, making typing on the app much easier than ever before. You can now resize the keyboard to your desired size, and there's even something in the works that will make adding apostrophes to your text even more seamless.
>
> If all of that wasn't enough, the app is now introducing a feature that some will find peculiar, which will [1]allow users to remove the period and common punctuation keys from Gboard . This news comes to us from 9to5Google, sharing that this is now an option with the latest version of the app.
[1] https://9to5google.com/2025/10/21/gboard-period-comma-keys/
Sounds like a bug to me (Score:5)
Let's eat, grandma
Let's eat grandma
Commas are important
Re:Sounds like a bug to me (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed. Two spaces can be a macro for a period, but I don't trust AI to know where the commas go.
Re:Sounds like a bug to me (Score:5, Funny)
We helped our uncle, Jack, off a horse.
Re: (Score:2)
I helped my uncle jack off a horse.
I helped my uncle Jack, off a horse
Re: (Score:2)
"Commas keep you from doing gross things", I said as I helped my uncle Jack off a horse.
Re: (Score:2)
Period
Re: (Score:2)
A piece of dialogue in Far Cry 5 that always makes me chuckle relating to commas, and furries:
"Fuck, a cougar!"
Re: (Score:2)
While I get your point, your example assumes anyone bothers to type the name of those to which the message was directed. If texting grandma, aren't the grandchildren just going to be texting 'eat?' (worse it's probably a food emoji)
Re: (Score:3)
Going back in ancient history...
In very ancient times a soldier asked to the Oracle ( [1]this [wikipedia.org] Oracle, not [2]that [oracle.com] one...), if he would survive the war he was called to fight.
The Oracle answered:
"Ibis redibis nunquam in bello morieris" that translates into: "go come back never die in war".
Unfortunately the Oracle used an ancient edition of Gboard for giving its answer, so it did not write down the commas.
We will never know if the answer was either "Ibis, redibis, nunquam in bello morieris" or "Ibis, redibis
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodona
[2] https://www.oracle.com/
Re: (Score:2)
Why would people want to hide them? I don't understand what use this would be, but then I'm kind of a slow r'Tard.
If anything, they should hide the apostrophe so people will stop using "it's" when they mean "its".
Re: (Score:3)
Apparently, you'd be surprised by the amount of people that have no idea what a capital letter, a comma, an apostrophe, or a dot is on internet.
Re: (Score:2)
Doesn't matter, people don't even know what get means.
Literacy has been dead for ages.
Re: (Score:1)
Probably the same people who have no clue what a "yield" sign means.
Re: (Score:2)
All stop signs with white borders are optional.
Re: (Score:1)
White borders matter!!
Re: (Score:2)
Always have. That's generally the source of most of the modern worlds problems lol
Re: (Score:2)
A few months ago I had a poster complain that I'd removed the beginning and end of a sentence of his I quoted and replaced the missing parts with three dots. Apparently he didn't know what an ellipsis is.
Re: (Score:2)
Apparently punctuation in texts means anger to teenagers.
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K
Re: (Score:2)
> Phew, it doesn't remove them. It just adds the ability to hide them if you want to.
It should deliver an electric shock if a message is sent without proper punctuation and capitalization.
Re: (Score:2)
>> Phew, it doesn't remove them. It just adds the ability to hide them if you want to.
> It should deliver an electric shock if a message is sent without proper punctuation and capitalization.
There are those of us who knowingly use improper punctuation and/or capitalization and/or grammar, either for effect or to quote a third party.
I don't wish to be shocked for playing with words, nor for accurate reporting. It's bad enough that the new version of the file manager I use haughtily informs me - while I'm typing in a new name - that a filename shouldn't begin or end with a space.
It's the job of teachers and parents to instill spelling and grammar skills. It isn't the job of technology to enforce
Soundsgoodtome (Score:5, Funny)
Thissoundslikeanawesomechangeforuserssinceusingthingslikecommaandor periodstakesuptoomuchofmyvaluabletimeIreallyhopethaththeirnextstepisto removespacesaltogethersincetherearesomanyoftheminEnglishtextItssomuch quickertojusttypeouteverythinginonecontinueousstreamoftextlikeThaidoes Dontyouthink mygodstypingthatlastbitoftextwasexhaustingwithhavingtousetheshiftkeyandall canwejustgetridofthatookthxbai
Re:Soundsgoodtome (Score:4, Interesting)
Congratulations. You have reverted to the way things were written [1]2,400 years ago [bbc.com].
What a great improvement. Certainly better than writers no longer using [2]the Oxofrd comma in sentences [preview.redd.it].
[1] https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20150902-the-mysterious-origins-of-punctuation
[2] https://preview.redd.it/please-use-oxford-commas-they-can-prevent-miscommunications-v0-pw1zgzmctsr81.jpg?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=efc60c99e0c6b9fe56883d5b6a119aa0d0d22b9a
Re: (Score:2)
Still true for modern day German
Re: (Score:2)
You jest, but this is exactly what happens if I try to type on LinkedIn in Firefox for Android.
oh, fsck no (Score:2)
No, no, no.
This, this right here, this is enshittification.
Re: (Score:3)
Giving users more options is enshitification?
Re: (Score:3)
In this case, yes.
Re: (Score:3)
How come? You can just not use it. It's not like removing keys saves them money
Re:oh, fsck no (Score:4, Insightful)
When the new options are demonstrably worse, the change has no clear motivation other than just being for change's sake, and the outcome will lead to a worsening of already poor ability to communicate, then, the answer is, "yes."
Re: (Score:2)
Ability for whom to [speak emoji] [question mark emoji] It's quite [sunny emoji] a lot of [group of people emoji] don't give a [eggplant emoji] about how to [speak emoji] [period emoji]
Including in the EU? (Score:2, Insightful)
I bet the EU forces them to put them back.
Re: (Score:2)
And add the umlaut. How ever will they write regulations without that?
Swype (Score:2)
It still upsets me that Swype is still the best keyboard, and that it can't really be used on modern Android anymore. No other keyboard I've found has embraced the extremely useful shortcuts that keyboard had. Did a word get completely mangled and you want to retype it? Tap the word and then double-tap the Swype symbol and it would select the whole word and let you try again. It is such a pain to do that on basically everybody other keyboard on Android. Copy/paste having shortcuts was also extremely us
Re: Swype (Score:2)
On Gboard, you can just hit backspace and it will delete the last word so you can try again. It kind of sucks when you don't realize until later, but at least that's something.
Re: (Score:2)
> On Gboard, you can just hit backspace and it will delete the last word so you can try again.
Yow. That's a bug, not a feature.
Re: (Score:2)
If you tap in the word, that's a bug, you probably typoed the last letter. If you Swype it in, that's intended behavior- you're undoing your last action either way (1 Swype vs 1 tap). Swype behaved the same way,
Re: (Score:2)
Hacker's keyboard is great when I'm using apps like ConnectBot. But, when I want to send an email or text, the swipe in Gboard works for me every ducking Rome.
Seriously, why? (Score:2)
From TFA:
> If turned off, Gboard’s bottom row will just be ‘?123’, [space bar] and the enter key for a cleaner look. It makes for a very wide space bar.
The amount of space "saved" / moved to the space bar is minuscule. Pretty sure most people's space-bar thumb aren't than wide...
Not good enough (Score:2)
Until they give us the option to remove whatever letters or symbols we want from the keyboard.. I mean seriously, how often does anyone use the letter "X"? or "Q", or how about "V"? :P
Misogynists! (Score:1)
What do they have against periods?
Women should be outraged!
Makes sense (Score:2)
It does make sense. At least two generations of people never use them. My sister teaches in a university and says the emails she gets from students are atrocious. Even worse this sometimes carries over into their writing for course work. It's probably better now; this was all before the advent of AI doing students' homework for them. One wonders how they speak with each other if their written grammar is so bad. Turns out they don't speak with each other.
What about data collection? (Score:2)
Does the update provide an option to remove data collection as well?
Apostrophe's (Score:1)
We do not need to make using apostrophes easier. People already use them in far too many places where they do not belong.
User Choices (Score:5, Informative)
The new update ALLOWS users to remove it, not removes it by default.
Android also lets users swap keyboards if you want to use swiftkey or something else
Re: (Score:2)
For now. The next step is hidden by default and the end game is they simply don't exist.
This is google, they play the long game when forcing changes no one wants.
Re: User Choices (Score:2)
A decade ago, TheOnion touted Apple's new laptop with a scroll clickwheel instead of a keyboard.
Re: (Score:2)
> For now. The next step is hidden by default and the end game is they simply don't exist.
Don't exist like a non-shit keyboard layout on iOS? They're not even smart enough at Apple to give you a layout where the number keys are across the top row when you're entering a password.
Re: (Score:2)
Then you can just swap to a different keyboard
Re: (Score:2)
Comma aybe, but stay away from the period it's used in urls an ac a secimal sep we neeed it
Re: (Score:1)
Why would anyone want to remove the punctuation keys to begin with???