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The physical flick keyboard that came first
If you searched for a physical flick keyboard before you found this site, you probably met Google Japan's version first. It deserves the credit, so here is what it was and where Furikku differs.
Google 日本語入力 物理フリックバージョン
On 1 April 2016, the Google Japanese Input team announced the Physical Flick Version — a desktop keyboard with twelve oversized kana keys that you did not press but pushed sideways. Each key sat on dual-axis potentiometers, so the board could read which way you shoved it and turn that into the kana you meant. It connected over Bluetooth.
It was an April Fools' announcement, and it was also completely real: the circuit diagrams and firmware went up on GitHub as mozc-furikku, one entry in a series of joke input devices Google Japan has been building since 2010. Switch Science later sold an assembly kit, which sold out.
Nothing came after it. The repository has been dormant since 2016, the kit is long gone, and the idea sat there — a genuinely good one, delivered as a punchline.
What Furikku does differently
The shared premise is that flick input is a good way to type Japanese and there is no reason it should be trapped on a phone. Everything below that premise is different.
- The surface
- mozc-furikku used physical keys on potentiometers, so a flick meant physically displacing a keycap. Furikku uses a 3.5″ capacitive touchscreen — no moving parts, and the variant kana appears under your finger as you drag.
- The connection
- Bluetooth then; USB-C now, enumerating as a plain HID keyboard. Nothing to pair and no battery to charge.
- The software half
- mozc-furikku fed Google Japanese Input. Furikku's keypad sends kana instructions that its own input method decodes, and converts with azooKey's neural engine, Zenzai.
- The intent
- A joke that shipped as a kit, versus a product meant to be used daily. That is the whole difference in ambition, and it is the part still to be proven.
About the name
Furikku is フリック — the Japanese word for flick, and what the input method itself is called in Japanese. Google's repository uses the same romanisation for the same reason. It's a common noun before it is anyone's brand, ours included.
Furikku is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or derived from Google or the mozc-devices repository, and it shares no code with it.
Ten years later
The 2016 board proved people wanted this and then stopped, because proving it was the point. Furikku is the same idea taken seriously: a touchscreen instead of switches, a cable instead of a pairing dialog, and an input method built to receive what it sends.