This page describes the changes made in each new release of Keyboard App Builder. You can download the latest or previous versions on the Download page.

Keyboard App Builder 10.2

Release date: 02 December 2022

New Features and Improvements:

  • App Builder Compiler window
    • When compiling an app, instead of using the standard command/terminal window, the app builder now uses its own window.
    • This allows us to hide some of the distracting compiler warnings that were not problems but which might have given the impression that there was an issue with the app compilation.
    • The window also allows app compilation using macOS Ventura, which otherwise was not working.
    • Added ‘Close compiler window on build success’ option for Mac and Linux.
  • Fonts: Updated Abyssinica font to version 2.200 (17 Nov 2022)

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • If app project paths contained an ‘&’ character, the list of open apps would not be saved and restored properly between launches of the app builder.
  • In the ‘Add Translation’ dialog, i.e. when adding an app name, you could not specify a language code like ‘pt-BR’ with a hyphen and uppercase letters (#1124).
  • If the welcome page was showing, changing the interface language using the button at the top-right of the screen made the welcome screen disappear, rather than redisplaying it in the selected language.

Keyboard App Builder 10.1

Release date: 09 September 2022

New Features and Improvements:

  • Font updates:
    • Added Dai Banna SIL 4.000 font (23 Aug 2022)
    • Added Payap Lanna 1.000 font (26 Aug 2022)
  • Updated library versions:
    • Android library versions updated (material components, preferences, AppCompat support).

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • In the Publishing > Google Play Listing page, when doing Import From Google Play on Windows, the results were not displayed.
  • When attempting to build and the Build Folder in Tools > Settings > Build Folders was not a valid folder, it would fail to start the build – but not report any error.
  • When migrating from an App Builder prior to version 10, the checking of the automatic JDK Location was not looking for Java 11. On Linux, Java 11 is an install requirement and was already present and it should have automatically switched to the new JDK.
  • On Linux, when manually installing the JDK, it was using the Windows JDK install zip.

Keyboard App Builder 10.0.1

Release date: 13 July 2022

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • Downloads of JDK and Android SDK as well as other network communications including with Scriptoria were not working on Mac.

Keyboard App Builder 10.0

Release date: 29 June 2022

New Features and Improvements:

  • Updated to use Keyman version 15.

  • Building apps for Android 12 (API 31)

    • Android apps are now compiled for Android 12.
    • Apps continue to work on Android versions 4.1 and above.
    • You will need to use the Install Android SDK wizard to download and install a new version of the Android SDK before you build an app.
    • See Tools > Install Android SDK.
  • JDK 11
    • Android apps are now compiled using Java Development Kit (JDK) version 11, rather than version 8 which has been used until now.
    • You will need to use the Install JDK wizard to download a new version of the JDK before you build an app.
    • See Tools > Install JDK.
  • Font updates
    • Updated Alkalami font to version 1.300 (27 April 2022).
    • Updated Padauk font to version 5.001 (8 June 2022).
  • Updated Gradle compiler to version 7.4.2.

Keyboard App Builder 3.3

Release date: 15 April 2022

New Features and Improvements:

  • Documentation updates:
    • Installation instructions: describing the new Install JDK wizard.
  • Use modern style for the Windows install wizard.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • If the selected default interface language was not among the enabled interface languages, the app would crash on launch (#994).
  • Stability improvements.

In the app builder:

  • If the JDK or Android SDK folders have not been specified, we need to look first in the default folders for Windows, e.g. c:\jdk and c:\sdk.
  • Do not allow JPEG files to be added as images if only PNG files are allowed, e.g. for navigation drawer images.

Keyboard App Builder 3.2.4

Release date: 22 February 2022

New Features and Improvements:

  • JDK Install wizard
    • You can now download and install the JDK using a wizard within the app builder.
    • Click Tools > Install JDK, or the Install JDK button on the Settings > Code Libraries tab.
  • Install buttons on Welcome screen
    • If the JDK has not been installed, an ‘Install JDK’ button will be displayed on the Welcome screen.
    • If the Android SDK has not been installed, an ‘Install Android SDK’ button will be displayed on the Welcome screen.

Keyboard App Builder 3.2.3

Release date: 15 February 2022

New Features and Improvements:

  • App Icons from IconKitchen
    • If you create your app icon using IconKitchen (https://icon.kitchen), the downloaded zip file will be correctly interpreted for setting Android legacy, adaptive and iOS icons.
    • Choose the IconKitchen-Output.zip file on the ‘Android Icon (legacy)’ or ‘iOS Icon’ page when selecting the icon image files.

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • If the app project could not be saved after the New App wizard, an error message should be displayed rather than failing silently.
  • If the Android SDK Install wizard failed to rename certain folders, this should be done before trying to build an app.
  • JDK version 17 will not work for building an app. A check is made to ensure that a valid JDK version (8 to 16) is specified.

Keyboard App Builder 3.2.2

Release date: 02 February 2022

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • Missing translations on the ‘Show Access Code’ tab of the Security configuration dialog.
  • If you select the registration screen, restricted devices or device-specific code access, the builder needs to check that the user interface messages have been provided before building the app.
  • If you used the Android SDK Installation wizard on a Mac, when you tried to ‘Install APK’ on a device, you would get permission denied messages.

Keyboard App Builder 3.2.1

Release date: 23 December 2021

New Features and Improvements:

  • Navigation Menu Items
    • The rows in the Navigation Menu Items table can be reordered by dragging rows up and down.

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • For some tables, the popup menu item corresponding to the double-click action was not indicated in bold.

Keyboard App Builder 3.2

Release date: 10 December 2021

New Features and Improvements:

  • Search bars for Styles, Colors and Interface Translations
    • It is now easier to find the row in the table you are looking for. The Styles, Colors and Translations tables all have search bars at the top. Begin typing to filter the list of items displayed.
  • Image gallery for navigation menu items
    • Added an icon gallery in the Add Menu Item wizard and Edit dialog, allowing you to select the navigation menu item icon.

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • Removed the old Scheherazade font, so users are encouraged to use Scheherazade New.

Keyboard App Builder 3.1.1

Release date: 05 November 2021

New Features and Improvements:

  • Keyboard reordering
    • If you have multiple keyboards in an app, you can reorder them in the builder by dragging the rows in the Keyboards table. This will change the order in which they appear on the Keyboard chooser screen. The first of them will be selected by default.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • If multiple keyboards were included in an app, a repeated error message about not finding ‘sil_euro_latin’ was shown when the app was launched.

In the app builder:

  • The Viewer for the About screen was always blank.
  • If the Create New Keystore wizard failed to create a keystore file, it would say it had succeeded (#818).
  • Spaces could be added accidentally to publishing property names. Extra spaces are now trimmed at the beginning and end of property names and values.
  • When building Android apps, preference should be given to the Google repository rather than JCenter for downloading libraries.

Keyboard App Builder 3.1

Release date: 26 October 2021

New Features and Improvements:

  • Language selection in App Builders
    • If you run the Windows installer in French, Spanish or Russian, the app builder interface will default to this language when it first launches.
    • You can swap between interface languages using a new selector button a the top right of the main app builder window.
  • Share Link to app installer file
    • When publishing Android apps as Android App Bundles (AAB) to Google Play, the “Share app installation file” feature is disabled. This is because Google Play uses the AAB to send each device a customised APK which is just right for that device but does not contain all of the resources necessary to be shared with other devices.
    • The new “Share link to app on website” allows you to publish a full APK to a website that can be shared in the app.
    • If you are publishing apps using Scriptoria, you can add the publishing property BUILD_SHARE_DOWNLOAD_APP_LINK=1 and Scriptoria will enable this feature and set the URL to a Scriptoria URL which provides a download page with the icon, title, description, APK size, and “Download APK” button. It uses the localized string from the Google Play Listing information. There is a Download_APK entry in the Interface Translation that can be customized per project.

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • Allow logout of Scriptoria. The Login process launches a web browser to do the authentication. It launches the page in the front most window. If the user has multiple windows with different profiles, then the wrong might be used. The user can logout and bring focus to the correct window and attempt to login again.
  • When downloading a project from Scriptoria, if the images were changed by someone else then this would not display correctly (old thumbnails of images still cached).
  • Added a hint in the About box configuration page on how to include illustrations.
  • Added missing French translations for various pages in the app builder interface.
  • If you edited or reset the interface translations, the modified flag would not be set and you would not be warned about saving the project before closing the App Builder.

Keyboard App Builder 3.0.1

Release date: 19 August 2021

New Features and Improvements:

  • Install Android SDK
    • Updated to download and install the Command Line tools version 5.0.
    • Made unzipping the package files more reliable after downloading them.

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • When adding Publishing Properties, do not allow blank entries.
  • When adding Interface Languages, do not allow invalid entries (which could not be deleted).

Keyboard App Builder 3.0

Release date: 04 August 2021

New Features and Improvements:

  • Keyman version 14
    • Apps now contain version 14 of the Keyman engine.
    • You can specify what text to display on the keyboard’s space bar.
  • Building for Android 11 (API 30)
    • Google now requires all new apps to be compiled for Android version 11 (API 30), and updates to existing apps will need to be compiled for Android 11 before November 2021.
    • Before building an app, you will need to go to Tools > Android SDK and click ‘Install Packages’ to update your Android SDK packages, or install a fresh Android SDK installation by clicking ‘Install Android SDK’.
    • See the updated Installation Instructions.
  • Android SDK Install Wizard
    • Installing the Android SDK was not easy for new users. They needed to go to the Android Developers’ website, download the command line tools zip file, unzip it to their computer, and then Install Packages to download and install the other Android packages.
    • There is now a simple wizard that takes you through all of these steps. See Tools > Android SDK > Install Android SDK.
    • You can now install the Android SDK from the Tools menu. See Tools > Install Android SDK.
    • You can check the Android SDK installation from the Tools menu. See Tools > Check Android SDK Installation.
  • Updated documentation:
    • Installation Instructions: updated section on installing the Android SDK, now using the Install Android SDK wizard.
    • Installing and Building on Mac: update sections on installing JDK and Android SDK.
  • Updated Fonts:
    • Padauk, version 5.000 (18 June 2021)
    • Scheherazade New, version 3.200 (15 July 2021).
  • For iOS apps, the minimum deployment level has been changed to iOS 10.0.

  • Updated Libraries:

    • Gradle compiler updated to version 7.1.1.
    • Firebase libraries updated to BoM 28.1.0.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • On the registration page, markdown links to web pages were not handled.
  • When building an Android App Bundle (AAB), the “Share app installer file” option should be disabled (since the APK file on the phone will be device-specific and not useful to share with others).

In the app builder:

  • Adaptive icons were not being saved if no background image or background color were defined.
  • When adding new user details fields to the registration page configuration, non-alphanumeric chars should be removed from the field code.
  • Do not show the ‘Allow skip’ checkbox in the Security configuration for device-specific access codes.
  • Do not show Lint errors when building Android app releases.
  • The download link for Azul JDK 8 needed updating.
  • Allow uploading projects to Scriptoria from multiple App Builders (e.g. KAB & DAB) at the same time.

Keyboard App Builder 2.6.6

Release date: 04 June 2021

New Features and Improvements:

  • Added ‘View Apps in Group’ checkbox menu item to the root of the app tree on the left of the screen, to turn on and off viewing by group.

  • Optional ‘SKIP’ button on Registration screen.

  • Scriptoria Improvements:

    • When a user uploads or downloads a project, an entry is added to the product details’ history of events.
    • The builder of the project in Scriptoria can add the authors so that the author can upload/download the project directly to Scriptoria. This requires the author to have a Scriptoria account.
  • iOS App: Added support for Firebase realtime database and user registration.

  • Updated libraries used to build apps.

    • Use latest AndroidX appcompat and material libraries.
    • Use mavenCentral rather than JCenter as the repository for downloading libraries.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • The registration screen could complain about a lack of internet connection in the latest versions of Android, even though there was an internet connection.
  • Allow links to image web pages in the About screen.

In the app builder:

  • If you tried to add an image from the images folder in the project data, the image file would be deleted.
  • On Windows, connecting to Scriptoria would only work once and then hang on subsequent attempts.
  • When uploading a project to Scriptoria, if there was something missing in the Google Play Listing, a warning would appear but it would still upload.
  • When downloading a project from Scriptoria, if the project name changed, then the project would not download correctly.

Keyboard App Builder 2.6.5

Release date: 04 May 2021

Bugs Fixed:

  • If you exited the Android app using the back button and then selected the app again, the About menu item in the navigation drawer would be missing until the app was restarted.

Keyboard App Builder 2.6.3

Release date: 31 March 2021

Includes changes made in 8.6.1 and 8.6.2.

New Features and Improvements:

  • The main toolbar in the App Builder now shows only those buttons that are applicable.
    • When launching for the first time, only the ‘New App…’ button will appear. Other buttons will be shown when there is an app to build or install.
  • Add option of “Always use main theme” for dark theme.

  • Installation changes:

    • Windows 32-bit is no longer supported. Windows 64-bit is required.
    • When selecting the Android SDK folder in Settings, look in the parent and child folders of the selected folder if the folder was selected incorrectly.
  • Scheherazade New font updated to version 3.100.

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • Added missing documentation PDF files.
  • Allow .jpeg files to be selected for screenshots on the Publishing > Store Listing page.
  • Validate build folder for Windows. If special/accented characters are in the default path, use C:\temp\SIL\build instead.
  • Include additional files in the Java runtime library.
  • Added more space for several French and Spanish translations.

Keyboard App Builder 2.6

Release date: 15 March 2021

New Features and Improvements:

  • Include Java runtime to avoid JAR file association and high resolution screen problems
    • After installing the App Builder on Windows, some users found that they could not launch the program because of incorrect JAR file associations. This has now been resolved by including a minimal Java runtime in the Windows setup program that is always used to run the App Builder (rather than searching for the Java runtime elsewhere on your computer).
    • This change will also mean better support for users with high resolution screens, since we use a more recent version of Java.
  • Default images for menu items
    • When adding additional menu items to the navigation drawer menu (e.g. Visit our website, Rate this app, etc.), default images are provided.
  • Welcome screen
    • The App Builder logo and a ‘New App…’ button have been added to the welcome screen, rather than it being a blank page.
  • Install APK improvement
    • Added more information about enabling USB debugging to the Install APK confirmation dialog.
  • Keystore usability improvements
    • When creating a new keystore, on the Alias page, you can choose to ‘Use the same password as on the previous page’.
    • When specifying a keystore, on the Signing page, you can choose to ‘Use the same password as above’ for the alias.
    • When trying to build an app, a warning is shown if the keystore password has been entered incorrectly.
  • Updated Firebase and Material Design library versions.

  • Documentation improvements

    • Building Apps: Added section on ‘Installing the app on your phone’.

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • Yes/No dialog boxes should be shown in the centre of the App Builder window, not the centre of the user’s desktop.

Keyboard App Builder 2.5

Release date: 12 February 2021

New Features and Improvements:

  • Install Latest APK on Device
    • If you have recently built an APK but didn’t have your phone connected to your computer, or if you want to install the same APK on multiple devices, you can use the ‘Install Latest APK on Device’ feature.
    • See “Install APK” on the main toolbar, or “Build > Install Latest APK on Device” from the main menu, or “ Install Latest APK on Device” on the right-click popup menu in the app tree on the left of the screen.
    • If no APK is found, you will be asked if you want to build it.
  • User interface improvements:
    • Themes: allow striped tables which is defined for some themes (Light Flat and Dark Flat).
    • Increased the height of the Project Description field.

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • If a non-existant Android SDK folder was specified, the Settings dialog could not be opened again.
  • The final page of a wizard should have a ‘Finish’ button rather than a ‘Next >’ button.
  • On Windows, correctly determine Classic mode for dialog frames.

Keyboard App Builder 2.4

Release date: 15 January 2021

New Features and Improvements:

  • New look and feel to the app builder desktop interface, with a choice of themes.
    • Updated folder and book icons for the app tree on the left of the screen.
    • To change the theme, go to Tools > Settings > Interface.
    • You can specify a dark theme to be used if the app builder is launched when the computer is in dark mode.
  • Enhancements to app publishing with Scriptoria:
    • If an app project is in Scriptoria, you can download it (File > Open App using Scriptoria)
    • You can download the latest version of the app from Scriptoria (see the Download button on the Publishing page).
    • Updated Google Play listing languages (added 13 languages) to match what is available in the Google Play Developer Console.
  • Improved responsiveness of the Interface pages and translation tables in the app builder.

  • Updated Installation Instructions:

    • Android SDK command line tools are now in cmdline-tools folder.
    • The recommended JDK is now Azul Zulu OpenJDK.

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • Android SDK command line tools were not being found in the cmdline-tools folder.
  • When installing Android SDK packages in the Settings > Android SDK tab, the Platform API version number would stay red, “Not Found”, after completing the installation.

Keyboard App Builder 2.3.1

Release date: 19 November 2020

New Features and Improvements:

  • Added “Scheherazade New” font, version 3.000 – an Arabic script font.

  • Updated Firebase libraries to use the latest versions.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • Apps were containing a reference to an AdMob library (a sub-dependency of Firebase Analytics) which could cause Google Play to ask whether the app contained ads.

In the app builder:

  • The user registration configuration dialog did not appear when clicking ‘Configure Registration’ on the App > Security tab.

Keyboard App Builder 2.3

Release date: 05 November 2020

Bugs Fixed:

In the app builder:

  • Logging into Scriptoria to send the project data could fail.
  • On macOS, trying to create a new keystore would fail.
  • On macOS, dragging the window to a secondary monitor would cause the App Builder to crash.

Keyboard App Builder 2.2

Release date: 14 October 2020

New Features and Improvements:

  • Allow creating an app which does not require Network or Write permissions. Minimum Android Platform should be set to “Android 4.4 KitKat (API 19)” and turn off “Features > Sharing > Share app installer file” which is on by default.

  • Updated code signing certificate for Windows installs.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • There were sharing permission problems in Android 10, e.g. sharing the APK file.

In the app builder:

  • Selecting a table row with the left mouse button and then right-clicking could be interpreted as a double-click.

Keyboard App Builder 2.1

Release date: 26 August 2020

New Features and Improvements:

  • Keyman Engine updated to version 13.0.6216.

  • About box improvement:

    • If you put three or more hyphens (---), asterisks (***) or underscores (___) on a line without any other text, the app will display a horizontal line.
  • Updated AndroidX libraries.

Keyboard App Builder 2.0.1

Release date: 11 August 2020

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • When using the access code security method, the key was not being read correctly from the project configuration file.

In the app builder:

  • Android app compilation failed when using both Firebase and Amplitude analytics in the same app.
  • When showing the building app progress bar, the title was not displayed correctly.

Keyboard App Builder 2.0

Release date: 04 August 2020

New Features and Improvements:

  • Android apps are compiled for Android 10
    • Google Play now requires new apps to be compiled for Android 10.
    • Apps can still be installed on Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and above.
  • Facebook Analytics
    • Basic support: integration of Facebook SDK library for logging when the app is launched.
    • To add Facebook, go to Analytics, click Add Analytics Account, and select Facebook Analytics as the Account Type. Enter your Facebook App ID.
  • Android App Bundles
    • Instead of creating an APK (or multiple APKs), you can create an Android App Bundle to upload to Google Play.
    • Select Build > “Build Android App Bundle” in the main menu, or right-click on an app name in the left-hand menu, and select “Build Android App Bundle”.
  • Updated libraries:
    • Gradle build tool updated to version 6.5.1.
    • Firebase libraries updated to latest versions.
    • Crashlytics library updated to use latest Firebase version.

Keyboard App Builder 1.1

Release date: 09 July 2020

New Features and Improvements:

  • Updated Keyman Engine to version 13.0.6214.

  • Navigation Drawer improvements

    • The text size of navigation drawer menu items is now adjustable according to the interface language text size.
  • The App Builder macOS app is notarized.

Bugs Fixed:

  • Android 5.0 and 5.1 devices could crash on startup due to a bug in the androidx appcompat library.
  • If an expiry data was set with the app exiting on tapping OK in the message, if the user tapped outside the message, the app would not exit.

Keyboard App Builder 1.0

Release date: 16 May 2020

New Features and Improvements:

  • Spanish translations
    • The app builder interface for 7.0 now has a complete translation in Spanish. To use it, go to Tools > Settings > Interface.
    • Added missing app translations in Spanish.
  • Updated libraries
    • Latest Firebase libraries.

Bugs Fixed:

In the Android app:

  • The device back button did not take you out of the app when you were in the home screen.
  • Various stability improvements.

Keyboard App Builder 0.9.1

Release date: 27 April 2020

New Features and Improvements:

  • Added more information on app screens in ‘Building Apps’ documentation.

Keyboard App Builder 0.9 (beta)

Release date: 24 April 2020

First public beta release.