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Cerebro – I got tired of waiting for Apple to fix their keyboard

Cerebro – I got tired of waiting for Apple to fix their keyboard

by hendricius·Feb 20, 2026·2 points·0 comments
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AI Analysis

●●SolidSolve My ProblemCozy

Translation + tone combined fixes real friction but keyboard replacement adoption is notoriously hard on iOS.

Strengths
  • •Translation-to-tone pipeline (German→Professional English) solves a specific pain point for multilingual workers.
  • •In-keyboard rewriting beats copy-paste workflows; no context switching required.
  • •Custom prompt support gives power users flexibility beyond preset modes.
Weaknesses
  • •iOS keyboard APIs are sandboxed; limited access to full context means accuracy gaps vs. app-based rewrites.
  • •Keyboard replacement adoption has a ceiling—users default to Apple's; competing against free built-in solutions is structurally difficult.
Category
Productivity
Target Audience

iOS users frustrated with Apple's keyboard; multilingual writers; non-native English speakers

Similar To

Grammarly Keyboard · SwiftKey · Apple Intelligence rewrite features

Post Description

Hey HN,

Like many of you, I've been frustrated with the iOS keyboard for years. Autocorrect gets worse with every update. Switching between languages is painful. Dictation dumps raw unformatted text. Apple doesn't seem to care.

So instead of switching to Android, I built Cerebro. It's a custom iOS keyboard that uses AI to actually help you write.

How it works: you type (or speak) what you want to say, pick a mode, and Cerebro rewrites it. That's it. No app switching, no copy-pasting into ChatGPT.

The feature that changed everything for me: Translation + Tone combined. I'm German, and I write messages in both languages all day. Now I just talk in German, pick "Professional English," and get a polished email. Or I write quick notes and pick "Friendly" to get something natural.

Other modes: grammar cleanup, summarize, expand, and you can create your own custom prompts.

Some background: I'm actually a bread baker. I run a YouTube channel called The Bread Code (350K subscribers) teaching people how to bake sourdough. But I'm also a software engineer, and this keyboard started as a side project to solve my own problem.

Built in Swift. Currently in TestFlight beta.

Try it: https://testflight.apple.com/join/x98U4HCk Website: https://cerebro-keyboard.app

Would love to hear what you think. Happy to answer questions about the keyboard extension API (it's... interesting to work with).

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