How to enable Text Prediction for Hardware Keyboard in Windows 10

Text Prediction is one of the most useful features any OS can offer. It not only saves time, it also takes care of your spelling mistakes which could embarrass you on a social network or an official document. Windows 10 also offers text prediction but it was limited to software keyboard that is mostly used on Tablets. Starting with Windows 10  version 1803, you can now enable Text Prediction for hardware keyboard in Windows 10.

Enable Text Prediction for Hardware Keyboard

To do this, open to Settings > Devices and switch to Keyboard section.

Scroll to Hardware keyboard.

• Toggle on “Show text suggestions as I type“
• Toggle on “Autocorrect misspelled words I type“

That’s it!

How does it work

This works across Windows 10 Apps, including Edge, Notepad and so on. It doesn’t work on third-party applications like Chrome.

As soon as you start typing, you will see suggestions popping up with a maximum of three or four words. To select one of the suggested words, press arrow up and then navigate using left and the right arrow key. And to complete a word, hit space to pick up one from the suggestions.

If you don’t stick to exact words of English, you can choose to disable autocorrection of misspelled words.

That said, not supporting every application is a huge drawback, especially when it comes to Chrome. There are a lot of users who use Chrome on Windows and use it for everything. Such user will have to use Predictive Text.

Does it work with every language

Officially, Microsoft claims to have it working with English US only, but I see it works with all languages that are supported for the software-based keyboard on Windows 10. I tried a few Hindi words, and it did suggest them.

It includes Assamese, Bashkir, Belarusian, Greenlandic, Hawaiian, Icelandic, Igbo, Irish, Kyrgyz, Luxembourgish, Maltese, Maori, Mongolian, Nepali, Pashto, Sakha, Tajik, Tatar, Tswana, Turkmen, Urdu, Uyghur, Welsh, Xhosa, Yoruba, Zulu.

Enable Multilingual Text Prediction

Not only it is easier to switch between two languages when using software keyboard, Microsoft has also enabled Multilingual text prediction which works for hardware keyboard as well.

So if you are writing in more than one Latin script languages, text prediction works.

• Go to Settings > Devices
• Switch to Keyboard section.
• Scroll to Multilingual text prediction.
• Enable toggle for “Show text predictions based on the recognized languages you’re typing in“

Let us know if you find using this feature useful.