Your keyboard is about to do a lot more than type
For nearly two decades, the smartphone keyboard has done one thing: let you tap letters to form words. Autocorrect got better. Predictive text got creepily accurate. But fundamentally, the keyboard remained a passive input tool — a flat grid of keys waiting for your fingers.
A Singapore-based startup called Acti looked at that static slab of glass and asked a simple question: why can’t the keyboard actually do things? After seeing a demo of the new AI keyboard Acti, it’s clear the idea has real traction.
Acti — short for “action” — just launched on both iOS and Android. It’s what the company calls an “agentic keyboard.” That’s a buzzwordy way of saying it doesn’t just predict your next word. It can perform tasks inside the apps you already use: messages, email, social media, you name it.
How the ActiBar replaces the space bar
The centerpiece of the app is the ActiBar. It replaces your standard space bar. Tap it to type as usual. But hold it down, and something different happens.
Let’s say a friend texts asking where you are. You type the location into the chat, then hold the ActiBar. The keyboard finds that location and drops a map pin straight into the conversation. No app switching. No copy-paste dance.
The same trick works for sports scores, restaurant recommendations, or nearby events. Acti even generates live mini-apps inside the chat so the other person can browse results without leaving the conversation.
It doesn’t stop at the space bar. You can assign actions to any key. Hold N to pull up a specific Notion doc and drop it into your chat. Hold L to fetch a LinkedIn profile when someone mentions a name. The keyboard becomes a launchpad for your most-used tools.
Custom shortcuts you can build with plain English
Acti also lets users create their own shortcuts, which the company calls Skills. You describe what you want in plain language — “find the nearest coffee shop and share the address” — and the keyboard builds the action for you. No coding required.
These Skills can stay private or be shared with the community. Over time, the library of user-built shortcuts could become a powerful resource, much like shortcut communities for apps like WhatsApp or Telegram.
The app is designed to be local-first. That means your personal data — contacts, messages, documents — stays on your device unless you explicitly use a feature that needs cloud access. For privacy-conscious users, that’s a meaningful distinction in the age of always-on AI assistants.
Pricing and availability
Acti is free to download and use for basic features. The company plans to introduce subscriptions for premium capabilities down the line, though no pricing has been announced yet.
It’s worth noting that Acti isn’t doing anything technically revolutionary. Other AI agents — from Google’s Gemini to Microsoft’s Copilot — can perform similar tasks. What makes the AI keyboard Acti stand out is its placement. It lives inside the keyboard, the one screen element you already interact with hundreds of times a day. You don’t have to switch apps, open a sidebar, or remember a voice command. You just hold a key.
Is this the future of smartphone input?
The smartphone keyboard has been ripe for reinvention for years. Third-party keyboards like SwiftKey and Gboard added swiping, GIF search, and clipboard history. But none of them turned the keyboard into an active agent. Acti is the first to treat the keyboard not as a passive input surface, but as a command center.
Whether users will actually retrain their muscle memory to hold the space bar instead of just tapping it remains to be seen. But the demo suggests that once you get used to it, the friction of jumping between apps for simple tasks starts to feel archaic.
For now, Acti is available on the iOS App Store and Google Play Store. If you’ve ever wished your keyboard would just do something instead of waiting for you to type it, this is worth a download.
