With the new update in place, whenever a keyboard is connected, either wirelessly or through a cable, users will see a pill-shaped toolbar at the bottom of the display. This Gboard physical keyboard toolbar can be moved anywhere on the screen. It offers a suggestion strip, which was previously available with the software keyboard open, along with a button to shrink the toolbar to a vertical pin on the left or right edge of the display.
The physical keyboard toolbar is available with Gboard v13.6
There is also a quick access button for the emoji picker that opens up in a floating window. You will also be able to access the Gboard's clipboard and translate features from the overflow menu. For the list of quick actions, you can tap on ‘Show keyboard shortcuts', while ‘Show on-screen keyboard' will show the virtual keys.
Gboard also offers you the option to enable/disable the physical keyboard toolbar. You can also set preferences for which emoji to appear on the toolbar, suggestions while typing, auto-capitalization, and auto-correction. The feature is available with Gboard 13.6 and above, but as per 9To5Google, it isn't widely available.
