How to change the tone of a message on iPhone

The words can be right and the tone still wrong: too blunt for a client, too stiff for a friend, too long for a busy manager. A keyboard that rewrites in the tone you choose fixes that in the app you are already typing in, without copying your message somewhere else and back.

Set up GKeyboard (about a minute)

Install GKeyboard from the App Store and open it. It is free and there is nothing to sign up for.
Open Settings → General → Keyboard → Keyboards → Add New Keyboard and choose GKeyboard.
Tap GKeyboard in that list and turn on Allow Full Access. iOS asks this of every keyboard that connects to the internet, and GKeyboard needs it to fetch AI suggestions. Without it you still get the keyboard, autocorrect and word suggestions.
In any app, touch and hold the globe key below the letters and pick GKeyboard.

The app walks you through the same steps when you first open it.

Rewrite a message in another tone

Type your message as it comes to you. It does not need to be polished.
Tap ✦ above the keys to open the AI panel.
Pick a style. You see the rewritten version before anything changes in your message.
Tap to put it into your message, or try another style.

Which style to pick

Formal: emails to clients, managers, landlords and anyone you do not know well.
Friendly: chats with friends and colleagues, or a message that reads colder than you meant.
Shorten: when you wrote three paragraphs and the reader needs one.
Expand: when a reply is so short it could sound annoyed.
Confident: asking for something, following up, or saying no without over-apologising.
Kind: hard news, feedback and apologies.
Improve and Fix grammar: keep your tone and just clean up the writing.
Emojify: add a few emoji to a casual message.

That is all 9 built-in styles. Read the result before you send it, especially names, dates and numbers.

Make your own tone

If none of the built-in styles sounds like you, describe the voice you want, for example "short and polite" or "casual, no emoji", and it becomes a one-tap button in every app.

Rewrite just part of a message

Select a sentence and choose GKeyboard AI to polish or translate only that part. It works on selected text even outside the keyboard.

What it costs

Rewrites are free, with a daily allowance shared with translation and reply suggestions that resets at midnight. GKeyboard Pro raises it to 300 a day (A$2.99 a month or A$19.99 a year in Australia; the App Store shows your local price).

What happens to your text

There is no account: no name, email or phone number.
Autocorrect, word suggestions and spell check run on your iPhone.
With Full Access on, the text you are writing in the current field is sent over an encrypted connection to the GKeyboard server, which passes it to OpenAI to make the suggestion. That can be the whole message around your cursor, not just one sentence.
The GKeyboard server does not store that text and filters it out of its logs.
The AI switches off in password, email, URL, number, one-time code and credit card fields.
Turn off Full Access at any time and GKeyboard sends nothing; it keeps working as an on-device keyboard.

The privacy policy has the details.

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