Thumb-Key
Dessalines Productivity
A privacy-conscious keyboard made for your thumbs.
- Rating
- 4.8
- 38 ratings
- Downloads
- 100+
- on Google Play
- Price
- $19.99
- No in-app purchases
- Updated
- Aug 29
- 2025 · v5.0.7
Screenshots
About Thumb-Key
Thumb-Key is a privacy-conscious smart keyboard, made specifically for your thumbs.
It features a 3x3 grid layout, and uses swipes for the less common letters. Its easy to learn, and designed for fast typing speeds.
Instead of relying on profit-driven, privacy-offending word and sentence prediction for accuracy, as do most popular phone keyboards like Gboard and Swiftkey, Thumb-Key uses large keys with predictable positions, to prevent your eyes from hunting and pecking for letters.
As the key positions get ingrained into your muscle memory, eventually you'll be able to approximate the fast speeds of touch-typing, your eyes never having to leave the text edit area.
This project is a follow-up to the now unmaintained (and closed-source) Message Ease Keyboard, which is its main inspiration.
It features a 3x3 grid layout, and uses swipes for the less common letters. Its easy to learn, and designed for fast typing speeds.
Instead of relying on profit-driven, privacy-offending word and sentence prediction for accuracy, as do most popular phone keyboards like Gboard and Swiftkey, Thumb-Key uses large keys with predictable positions, to prevent your eyes from hunting and pecking for letters.
As the key positions get ingrained into your muscle memory, eventually you'll be able to approximate the fast speeds of touch-typing, your eyes never having to leave the text edit area.
This project is a follow-up to the now unmaintained (and closed-source) Message Ease Keyboard, which is its main inspiration.
What’s new
Version 5.0.7 · Updated August 29, 2025
https://github.com/dessalines/thumb-key/blob/main/RELEASES.md
User reviews
I've been using this layout for many years now. the fact that this dev is firmly against keylogging thats become so common is the icing on top. this is something of real value, please do yourself the favor and get it and learn anihortes. it does wonders for my peace of mind. oh yeah and all this because messagease h...
awesome!
Superb. I've used Messagease for years, but since it self-destructed I've been searching for a replacement, and have finally found it in Thumb-Key. (It's free on several platforms but I've bought the Play Store version to support the developer.)
Glad that MessageEase went to subscription. It forced to me to find Thumb-Key which I much prefer. It doesn't include some MessageEase features that I rarely used or turned off if I could so I'm very happy. I was having some issues with accuracy due to upgrades over the years that are not a problem in Thumb-Key
Deleted Messagease, came here instead. I would like to see: 1. adding '+' to the end of a string and hitting 'backspace' capitalizes the first letter: eg 'george+' & 'backspace' becomes 'George'. 2. adding '-' to the end of a string and hitting 'backspace' deletes the whole string: eg 'george-' & 'backspace' = ''. 3...
Awesome MessageEase alternative! It feels lighter and more responsive. And my previous custom MessageEase configuration was already a standard config here! (German + åæø)
Alternatives to Thumb-Key
Looking for apps like Thumb-Key? Here are 4 similar Android apps on Google Play. The highest rated is Jerboa for Lemmy (3.7/5), and 1 of the 4 are free to download.
| App | Rating | Price | Installs | Last updated | Compare |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thumb-Key | 4.8 / 5 | $19.99 | 100+ | Aug 29, 2025 | |
| Jerboa for Lemmy | 3.7 / 5 | Free | 100+ | Feb 17, 2022 | Compare |
| LCD Retro Black watch face | – | 1.99 USD | 1+ | May 6, 2025 | Compare |
| Habit Maker | – | 4.99 USD | 1+ | Sep 15, 2025 | Compare |
| Rank My Favs | – | 4.99 USD | 5+ | Jul 23, 2025 | Compare |
Compare Thumb-Key with the top alternatives: ratings, updates, ASO score and keyword gaps →