Apple has made a meaningful keyboard update in iOS 27 Beta 1, according to a June 12 report from 9to5Mac. The update expands Apple’s built-in keyboard support to 10 more languages and also improves Chinese input, especially for Simplified Chinese users who rely on Pinyin and other phonetic input methods.
For many users in the U.S., this may sound like a small system change, but keyboard quality matters a lot in daily use. Better candidate suggestions, faster switching, and stronger multilingual handling can make messaging, search, notes, and translation work feel noticeably smoother.
The expanded language list in the iOS 27 keyboard update includes Afrikaans, also known as South African Dutch; Basque, a language isolate in Europe with no confirmed connection to the Indo-European family or any other known language family; Baybayin, an ancient abugida writing system; English for the Philippines; Galician; Guarani; and several Indigenous languages, including Blackfoot, Comanche, Cree, Kiowa, and Suttun.
Apple is also adding support for Luxembourgish, a West Germanic language in the High German branch and specifically part of the Moselle Franconian dialect group. Luxembourgish has been one of Luxembourg’s official languages, alongside French and German, since 1984.
The update also brings support for Xhosa, locally known as isiXhosa, which is one of the major languages of southern Africa. Xhosa is one of South Africa’s 12 official languages and is also an official language in Zimbabwe. Zulu, or isiZulu, is also included; it is one of southern Africa’s most influential languages and the most widely spoken first language in South Africa.
For Simplified Chinese, Apple says iOS 27 improves the conversion of phonetic input such as Pinyin. The system can use surrounding context to provide more relevant candidate words and can also suggest punctuation after Chinese text is entered. In practical terms, users should see fewer awkward suggestions and a smoother path from typed Pinyin to the intended Chinese characters.
The company’s broader multilingual typing changes include automatic punctuation when typing on multilingual keyboards, improved character decomposition input for Chinese, faster loading for the emoji and sticker keyboard, faster multilingual handwriting recognition, and better conversion behavior when entering Simplified Chinese and Japanese through phonetic systems such as Pinyin and Kana.
Apple has also added new keyboard layouts for Slovenian and Estonian, new interface languages for English in Canada and English in the Philippines, and on-screen contextual information that helps provide more relevant suggestions for Chinese and Japanese input. Vietnamese VNI keyboard users are also getting shortcut paths and input suggestions.
One particularly useful change for Chinese users is the improved logic for decomposing Chinese characters. Apple previously described a method where users can find rare characters by entering the Pinyin for two components of a character. For example, the character “珲” can be found by entering “wang jun,” matching its component structure rather than requiring users to already know a harder direct input path.
Taken together, the iOS 27 keyboard update is less about flashy AI branding and more about practical typing quality. It gives more language communities first-party support while making Chinese input more context-aware and less frustrating for everyday writing.
