ReteKey

A Hangul keyboard for developers and power users — for anyone who needs Esc, Tab, Ctrl chords, function and arrow keys on a phone, and a keyboard that behaves itself in a terminal.

It is small and asks for almost nothing. The APK is about 470 KB, most of that the Hanja tables, written in plain Java with no third-party runtime dependencies; the Hanja tables are memory-mapped straight out of the APK, so they cost storage rather than memory. It declares a single permission, VIBRATE — an ordinary permission, never requested at runtime, driving nothing but the buzz under your finger, which you can turn down to zero. No network, no account, no analytics.

And nothing is missing for it.

The keys other keyboards leave out

Esc, Tab, Ctrl, Alt, Meta, F1-F12, the arrows, Home and End, PgUp and PgDn, Ins, forward-delete and PrtSc, sent as real key events rather than as characters that look like them. Modifier chords the keyboard has no use for are handed to the app, so an editor's own shortcuts keep working, and a soft Ctrl plus a letter sends a genuine control code to a terminal.

Layouts

* 2-beolsik, the standard full Korean keyboard.
* 천지인 and 나랏글, the two 12-key phone layouts. Both compose the whole of Hangul, including every compound final — 많, 삶, 앉 and the rest. Two keys in the spare column turn the twelve keys into the phone keypad's digits or into the cursor cluster.
* QWERTY, Dvorak and Colemak for English; Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Polish, German, Turkish, French AZERTY, Greek, Hebrew, Persian, Arabic, Urdu, Thai, Hindi, Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian, Georgian and Armenian with their own letters on their own positions; Vietnamese with Telex; Japanese by romaji or on the 12-key flick pad, typed straight into hiragana.
* A symbols page, a keypad with arrows and function keys, and a menu page for edit commands.
* The globe key walks the layouts you enabled, in the order you set.

Typing on twelve keys

천지인 keys can be dragged instead of tapped: a consonant key gives its plain letter to the left, its aspirate to the right and its tense letter downward, and a vowel key points at the letter it makes. Hold a key instead and a guide shows what is where, with the keypad digit in the middle. Nothing has to be waited out.

Hanja

Conversion in both directions with 훈음 glosses, paging and number-key selection, from a candidate window the width of the keyboard.

Physical keyboards

The on-screen keyboard hides itself when a hardware keyboard is attached, and hardware typing composes Hangul through the same 2-beolsik automaton. Ctrl, Alt and Meta chords reach the app rather than being swallowed. 한/영 and 한자 can be bound to keys of your choosing.

Made to suit you

* The keyboard's height is set as a share of the screen, from 1% to 50%.
* Height, the layout list and its order, the floating panel and its opacity are remembered separately for a screen held upright and one held sideways.
* Keys that can be held say so: an open ring in the corner while they are not, a filled disc while they are. Shift, Ctrl, Meta and Alt each arm for one key on a tap and lock on a hold.
* A half-width floating panel you can place where you like, as see-through as you like.
* Key-press feedback — highlight, vibration and sound — each adjustable to zero.
* Follows the system light and dark theme, and Material You where the device has it.

Old Android

Two builds ship from one source. The one on F-Droid is for Android 9 and newer. A build for Android 4.0 and newer is on the project's releases page; everything works there, and the README says which few things behave differently.

The name

rete is Latin for net. It is meant to be said the Latin way, RAY-teh.

Is ReteKey free to download?
Yes. The APK file linked from this page is free. The developer may offer in-app purchases once installed, but obtaining the installer itself costs nothing.

What Android version does ReteKey require?
Android 4.1+ or newer. Installing on older devices may cause crashes or refuse to install.

Is ReteKey safe to install?
We link to the exact APK published by ReteKey contributors. We do not modify the file. Still, as with any sideloaded app, scan it with a reputable antivirus before opening it, and only grant permissions the app genuinely needs.

How do I update ReteKey?
Install the newer version on top of the old one — Android will keep your data. If the signature differs, uninstall first (you may lose local progress).

Why is the app not installing?
Common causes: not enough storage, an older Android version than 4.1+, or a conflicting build already installed. Free up space, check your OS version, and uninstall any previous copy before retrying.

1. Tap the Download APK button above and save the file to your device.
2. Open your device Settings → Security (or Apps → Special access → Install unknown apps) and allow your file manager or browser to install unknown apps for this one file only.
3. Open the downloaded com.retekey.apk file from your Downloads folder.
4. Tap Install and wait for Android to finish.
5. Open «ReteKey» by ReteKey contributors and grant only the permissions it actually needs.
6. Revoke the "unknown sources" permission once you are done installing.

Note: this page hosts or links to the installer only. The application name, icon and description are provided for identification. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.