I just sent this feedback to Google regarding their keyboard for KitKat. Has anyone noticed this too, and maybe found a fix or a workaround?
I love the new Google keyboard in Android 4.4! I finally moved away from Swype because it was so sluggish. The word suggestion and auto correction functions in Swype have become unusably bad. The Google keyboard is much snappier and has some nice features. However, I think there are a few things missing that would make the Google keyboard even better.
1. Keyboard-like shortcuts
Shortcuts to select all, copy, paste, etc. are not as user friendly as they could be. We can tap and hold the screen to select text, then use the select all, cut, copy, and paste icons. But I really like Swype's PC keyboard-like shortcuts. Gliding from the Swype key to the A key selects all text; Swype+X cuts text; Swype+V pastes text, and so on. It's a bit quicker than the "click and hold" method with the Google keyboard.
2. Quicker capitalization and punctuation
With Swype, you can glide from the first letter in a word (or even a letter mid-word) to the area above the keyboard as a way of telling it you want just that letter capitalized, then come back down to the keyboard and continue gliding to finish out the word.
You can also glide from letters mid-word to punctuation, such as an apostrophe. With Google's keyboard I have to glide through "i-t-s" and hope Google knows if I want it's or its (granted, Google is pretty good at getting it right). Google's method of gliding from the numbers key to punctuation is a clever idea, but Swype is faster at this (when it's not being a turtle and lagging behind input), because I don't have to stop gliding to add punctuation.
3. Quicker deletion
With Swype, holding down the backspace key will delete entire words. It makes deleting several words or a sentence or two very quick when I am too lazy to highlight text and delete it all at once.
4. Keyboard themes
At least on my Nexus 5 with "vanilla Android," the look of the stock Google keyboard is a bit boring. The only options are white or blue, and that only changes the color of the glide trail and weird prediction text. The keyboard makes my phone's screen look like an old monochrome computer monitor (OK so that's an exaggeration). Swype has about a dozen theme options, if not more.
Can we get a few more color/theme options?
5. No "number pad mode" like Swype.
In Swype, holding the numbers key for a second brings up a computer keyboard-style number pad with large number keys. It comes in handy when entering a long string of numbers, or when working on a Google Drive spreadsheet.
6. The word suggestion bar does not always appear. For example, when entering a URL or search terms in the Chrome address bar, or responding to messages in the eBay app, the word suggestion bar does not appear. I have to manually correct text in these instances. It would be nice if the bar appeared for any text entry, no matter which app I am in. Swype's suggestion bar appears in every case.
7. Auto capitalization doesn't work with two spaces after a period. Swype automatically capitalizes the first letter in a sentence whether there is one space or two. With the Google keyboard, I have to manually go back and capitalize the first letter in every sentence of there are two spaces after the period. It's a small gripe, but my English teachers growing up drilled the "two spaces after a period" rule.
These are pretty minor complaints. Maybe I'm just too used to the way Swype does things. But for me, these improvements would make the Google keyboard easily the best keyboard ever. Thank you, Google, for everything you do.