Andrew Heinzman
Oops, no more keyboard! Trying to use Microsoft SwiftKey’s voice-to-text function may crash your Android 12 phone’s keyboard, leaving you without the ability to type text in any app. This bug appears to affect all Android 12 smartphones, including Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy devices.
We replicated the bug on a Pixel 6 Pro and found that the keyboard would only reappear after repeatedly disabling and re-enabling SwiftKey until a default keyboard prompt popped up. (You can probably fix this problem by changing your default keyboard in settings. Unfortunately, the Pixel 6 settings lack such an option.) Unfortunately, while going through all that effort temporarily “corrects” the problem, it’ll crop back up if you restart your phone.
Reports of this bug started cropping up at least four months ago. Some users say that updating their device or apps resolved the issue, while others say the problem resolved itself. We found that the bug is a bit sporadic, which may explain why some customers think it’s resolved.
Either way, if you want to test this bug (for whatever reason), install SwiftKey on your Android 12 device and try using the text-to-speech function. That’s the microphone icon at the bottom of the keyboard, by the way.
We’ve reached out to Microsoft to ask if it’s aware of this problem. Feel free to contact me at andrew@reviewgeek.com if you’ve experienced this or similar bugs with SwiftKey or Android 12.
