Apple Adds Indigenous Language Keyboards to iPhone and iPad

Apple's iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 updates arrived in September with a revamped Siri AI drawing most of the attention, but CNET reports the releases also added keyboard support for several Indigenous languages, including Blackfoot. The feature lets users type and send messages in those languages directly on iPhone and iPad.

The significance of that addition is easier to grasp when you consider how few speakers some of these languages have. Cherokee, for instance, counts roughly 1,500 fluent speakers worldwide, according to the report. Apple first brought Cherokee to iOS in 2010, making it the company's earliest Native American language addition to the platform.

Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. framed the collaboration with Apple as a way to connect language revitalization efforts with younger generations. "The technology that we utilize with Apple has allowed us to take everything that we really are trying to achieve here, which is the perpetuation and the revitalization of Cherokee language and culture, and use that same technology to make it relevant to the young people that are learning here," Hoskin said, according to Apple.

The tools are also showing up in classrooms. In Oklahoma, teachers are using them to help students engage with Native American languages, and students can record themselves to practice pronunciation and review the recordings later. Erlinda "Daksi" Soap, a fifth-grade teacher at Oklahoma's Cherokee Immersion School, told Apple that precision matters enormously in the language: "In Cherokee language, every sound is so important. One sound off, and you're saying a completely different word."

Building the Cherokee keyboard was not a simple localization task. The written Cherokee language uses 85 characters, down from an original 86, representing spoken syllables. Cherokee artist Roy Boney Jr. worked alongside Apple engineers to bring the syllabary to Apple devices. "A big part of being Cherokee is you ensuring things like language and culture survive and continue," he told Apple.

The report also highlights the personal stakes for younger Cherokee speakers. Olivia Daugherty, a high school student who graduated from the immersion school in 2024, recalled her father teaching her to count and name animals in Cherokee when she was a child. She described worrying about losing her language and community. "My niece, she's a first-language speaker in our language ... She's one of the first in a very long time," Daugherty told Apple.

What does this mean for the average iPhone or iPad owner? For most users, the change is invisible. If you already type in any of the newly supported languages, the keyboard is now available natively, with no third-party app required. For everyone else, nothing about daily use changes.

Apple has not disclosed a specific list of every language added in this release, at least not in the material reviewed here. The update's timing was noted alongside Indigenous Peoples' Day in the US, a federally recognized holiday honoring Native American heritage, culture and sovereignty, but the report does not establish that the timing was deliberate.

It is worth being measured about what a keyboard can and cannot do. Software support does not reverse language decline on its own, and the report offers no adoption figures or evidence about how widely these keyboards are being used. What the reporting does show is that Apple has continued extending its platform into languages with small speaker populations, and that some educators and community leaders see practical value in that.

For anyone weighing whether the update matters to them personally, the answer is straightforward. If you or your family communicate in one of the supported Indigenous languages, this is a meaningful quality-of-life addition. If not, the keyboard changes will not register in your day-to-day experience.