On long term, it would be very difficult to perform computer-related tasks without a physical keyboard, but it doesn’t mean its virtual replacement cannot be useful in certain situations. A temporarily malfunctioning keyboard or making sure that you can input sensitive data without getting tracked by keyloggers are valid examples of a virtual keyboard’s usefulness.
Free Virtual Keyboard is a simple, portable application that offers exactly what its name says. With multilingual support it offers a clean, resizable keyboard on your computer’s screen.
Installation & Requirements
Since Free Virtual Keyboard is a portable application it doesn’t need to be installed and works by simply launching the executable file. A .ini file containing the program’s configuration settings will automatically be created in the application’s folder.
Free Virtual Keyboard works on the following operating systems: Windows 2000, 2003, XP, Vista, 7 and 8.
Interface
As soon as you launch the program, the virtual keyboard will appear on the screen. There’s nothing special about its design, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s just a classic keyboard offering all the standard characters and functions. It can be resized and moved using the mouse, like any other window.
A context menu accessible via mouse right-click anywhere on the keyboard offers a few options. Firstly, users can enable/disable key repeat (pressing a key would auto-repeat when pressed continuously) and use the “fit width” option to make the keyboard as wide as the screen.
Secondly, by repeatedly pressing “Change colors” and “Change keyboard type” users can browse through several color schemes and keyboard layouts. For languages different than English the developer offers separate versions of the program.
If you want to run the keyboard from a portable storage device you can simply copy the executable. However, the settings are stored in the FreeVK.ini file so you’ll need to copy it too if you want to preserve them across devices.
Pros
– Portable tool with no installation needed.
– Movable, resizable on-screen keyboard.
– Offers several color schemes and keyboard layouts to choose from.
Cons
– Language selection is not possible from the program’s options. Each supported language has a different version of the application.
Alternatives
– Click-N-Type
– Hot Virtual Keyboard
Conclusion
The Windows operating system also has a built-in virtual keyboard. Nevertheless, it has no customization options so Free Virtual Keyboard does have a few additional capabilities as well as versions for other languages than English.
