A Developer Made an iPhone Keyboard App to Honor His Pug

Thanks to a subtle change to iOS by Apple in 2014, people can now install third-party keyboards on their iPhones. This feature was intended to let users switch up the way they type by downloading third-party keyboards, such as SwiftKey, Swype or Word Flow. But nearly two years after this feature's launch, developers have gotten really creative with the keyboard apps they're developing. Just this week, for example, Google rolled out its new Gboard, which lets iPhone users search the web directly from their keyboard no matter what app they're typing in.

But Gboard is just one of the unique keyboards that have rolled out in the past year. Just as common these days are keyboards that have nothing to do with typing. These apps let people customize the color and design of their keyboards , send their friends stickers and emoji, and quickly search for and send animated gifs.

With the Bitmoji Keyboard you can create a cartoon doppelganger of yourself in about five minutes and then send out images of your mini-me in a variety of situations to all your friends. "Ruff Day" reads one of the Bitmoji, coupled with your cartoon dressed in a dog costume.

These keyboards have only been available to iPhone users for about a year and a half. They've been around for Android much longer, but as with many things in tech, many of these keyboards are only now becoming popular. The maker of Bitmoji, for example, was recently purchased by Snapchat for around $100 million.

Emily Motayed, 28 of Denver, estimates that she uses Bitmoji for at least 75 percent of all her text message conversations. She also likes to use PopKey to send gifs to her friends.

"You're just trying to make that other person laugh," Motayed said. "It's just kind of mimicking a conversation that you would have in person."

Among the most interesting third-party keyboards in the Apple App Store are Stick Texting, a keyboard for sending stick figure animations; Kibo, which lets users send each other secret, encrypted messages; YeahKeys, an app for customizing your phone's keyboard; and Pugmoji, which is a keyboard dedicated entirely to letting users send out emoji of Pug dogs.

"I have a pug myself (called Batman, The Batpug), who is quite famous with around 150,000 followers across all his social networks," said Paul Hayes, the London-based developer of Pugmoji. "I wanted to be able to send his little face as an emoji sticker, so I asked if other people would like a Pug emoji/sticker keyboard as well. Around 10,000 people responded saying yes! So I thought I'd build one."

Proving the popularity of these unique, alternative keyboards are the numbers for Pugmoji. The $1.99 app has been downloaded by tens of thousands of users, and just last month, more than 250,000 Pugmoji stickers were sent out by users, according to Hayes.

The app has proven so successful that earlier this month Hayes rolled out a follow-up keyboard app called Frenchiemoji, dedicated entirely to french bulldog emoji.

"Loads of people asked for a Frenchiemoji version, so that was the next logical step," Hayes said. "I just wanted the ability to send cute pug faces to my friends and other pug lovers. It turns out lots of other people do too!"