What you need to know
- SwiftKey Beta now has an Animoji-like feature called 'Puppets'.
- Puppets lets you record messages as several cute animals like a dog or owl.
- The update also brings support for the Shan language.
SwiftKey Beta users can now play with Puppets, a 3D animation feature that's similar to Animoji's on iOS or Samsung's AR Emoji. Users can record themselves as a dinosaur, cat, owl, dog, or panda and have their phone's camera track their face so SwiftKey can animate their facial movements.
Introducing Puppets – new in SwiftKey Beta for Android! Create and share videos of your own virtual puppets that mimic your facial expressions, head movements and voice. Which character is your favorite? https://t.co/gWZJ0Z81pI pic.twitter.com/8T3FRHLjsCIntroducing Puppets – new in SwiftKey Beta for Android! Create and share videos of your own virtual puppets that mimic your facial expressions, head movements and voice. Which character is your favorite? https://t.co/gWZJ0Z81pI pic.twitter.com/8T3FRHLjsC— Microsoft SwiftKey (@SwiftKey) July 4, 2019July 4, 2019
Because Puppets is inside your keyboard, it works with just about any app, though the ease of use varies. For example, sending a video through Slack, Facebook Messenger, and Telegram requires you to select the recipient again even if you're already in a message thread with them.
By far the biggest news of the day. pic.twitter.com/bEA74k1PdRBy far the biggest news of the day. pic.twitter.com/bEA74k1PdR— Sean Endicott (@Sean_Michael_UK) July 4, 2019July 4, 2019
As you can see in my test video, Puppets is still very rough. It doesn't track mouth movements very well and seems out of sync. It is in beta, so this will likely improve over time.
In addition to the Puppets addition, SwiftKey Beta now also supports the Shan language. You can update SwiftKey Beta by checking for an update in the Google Play store.
