Google is reportedly developing a keyboard for iPhone

In a bid to boost the number of search traffic from iOS devices, Google is reportedly developing a standalone keyboard for iOS. The Verge reports the the project is currently unnamed and has been in development for months, and is being tested internally.

Google's Keyboard is said to use a number of feature to distinguish itself from the stock iOS keyboard. While the keyboard will be visually similar to the standard Android keyboard, the iOS version might have a dedicated Google logo for web searches bar and buttons for images and GIF searches as well. The keyboard will also have features like gesture-based typing, predictive text and voice search.

Back in 2014, Apple opened support to third-party developers to use their keyboards with iOS 8, but suffered from sluggishness and other performance issues. It remains to see how Google tackle these issues, which also includes Apple's strict policies for products that affect UI components.

The report does not mention when the app will be released.