The latest Android app to emerge from the Microsoft Garage is a keyboard app. But Hub Keyboard is much more than a replacement for the stock keyboard on your smartphone.

It’s not designed to help you type faster, but rather to help you find information you need more quickly. And in some situations, that could make text input a lot faster.

hub keyboard

Here’s how it works. Once you install Hub keyboard and set it as your default keyboard, you’ll see a fairly standard looking QWERTY keyboard. But above the keyboard there are a series of special icons.

Tap the clipboard icon on the left and you have access to items you’ve recently copied from other apps. Unlike the default Android clipboard, the Hub keyboard clipboard will show multiple items and not just the last thing you copied.

Next to that icon is one for documents, which lets you search for OneDrive or SharePoint documents linked to your account so you can quickly paste those into a document. Paul Thurrot notes that you’ll need a work, school, or university Office 365 account to use this feature. Home and Personal accounts don’t seem to work.

There’s also a Contacts icon that lets you search for a contact to get their address, phone number, or other details without exiting the app you’re currently using.

All the way on the right side is a translate icon, which lets you translate text into a different language.

Microsoft’s Hub Keyboard is available as a free download from the Google Play Store.

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