iOS 27 adds Blackfoot, Comanche and Northern East Cree keyboards

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Apple has added three Native American languages — Blackfoot, Comanche and Northern East Cree — to the iPhone keyboard in iOS 27, Wired reports.

The company works with indigenous communities to design keyboard layouts that respect each language's writing conventions, such as omitting capital letters where they aren't used.

The iOS keyboard supports more than 200 languages and variants, with customisations like the Cherokee keyboard's dynamic bottom row.

Apple has added three Native American languages to the iPhone keyboard in iOS 27: Blackfoot, Comanche and Northern East Cree, Wired reports in a feature on how the company works with indigenous communities. Cherokee was the first Native American language in iOS, in 2010, and Nez Perce and Haitian Creole followed in iOS 26.

The process of supporting a language starts with getting its written characters into the Unicode standard, after which Apple consults with community members to agree on letter forms and keyboard layouts. For Nez Perce (Nimipuutimt), which has no capital letters, Apple changed the shift key to offer accented characters instead. In the Cherokee keyboard, the bottom row now changes dynamically depending on the first letter pressed, as AppleInsider notes.

Apple says the iOS keyboard now supports more than 200 languages and language variants. The customisations show how the company tailors its software to languages that do not follow typical Western writing conventions.

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