ForgeBoard is now FrankenKeys

If you installed ForgeBoard, you have FrankenKeys. The app on Google Play under the package studio.forgedev.forgeboard was renamed in place on 2026-09-04. It is the same app, the same install, the same one-time unlock, and the same listing. This page is permanent, so a search for the old name always lands somewhere that says so.

What stayed exactly the same

• The package id, studio.forgedev.forgeboard. Google does not permit a package to be renamed, so the store URL will say forgeboard forever. The Play link is play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=studio.forgedev.forgeboard.
• The Pro unlock, product id forgeboard_pro. Renaming a Play product voids every purchase made under the old id, so it keeps its name and your purchase keeps working.
• The privacy policy URL, forgedev.studio/forgeboard/privacy, because it is printed inside every build already installed.
• Every file format. A backup begins {"app":"ForgeBoard"}, a shortcuts export begins # ForgeBoard shortcuts v1, and a shared build file begins FORGEBOARD SETUP 1. Those are format tags, not the app's name, and renaming one would reject every file a user already has.
• The permission list. Five entries, no network. The receipt.

What changed

The name on the icon, the name in the listing, and the name in this site's address bar. FrankenKeys is the keyboard half of FrankenDrop, a brand that also makes phone cases, and the keyboard was renamed to sit beside them. Nothing about how it types or what it holds changed with the name.

And before ForgeBoard, ApexBoard

The app was first published as ApexBoard under the package com.forge.apexboard. On 2026-09-02 it was re-created as ForgeBoard under the current package, because a package id cannot be changed on an existing listing. That was done at zero downloads and zero ratings, the only moment it is cheap: there was no install base and no purchase to migrate.

If you somehow have ApexBoard installed: export a backup from it, install FrankenKeys, import the backup. The two apps cannot read each other's storage, but a backup file crosses over. Theme and scene codes written by ApexBoard began APEX1: and APEX2:; FrankenKeys still decodes both, and always will, because a code somebody saved in a note is not mine to break.

Why the name changed at all

ForgeBoard was a placeholder that stuck. FrankenKeys says what the thing is: a keyboard stitched together in a basement out of parts that should not work together, a synthesiser, a press-effect engine, thirty dictionaries and an on-device AI, with no way out to the network. The name collides with an existing hobbyist term for hand-built mechanical switches, which is why every page here says "Android keyboard" beside it.

If you are searching for the old name

• The app: Google Play, studio.forgedev.forgeboard.
• The permission list: permissions.
• How the unlock carries over: one payment, no subscription, no account.
• The share formats and why their headers still say ForgeBoard: one file, whole keyboard.

Three names, one manifest. The manifest is the part that matters and it has not changed.