I’ve tried a few keyboards over the years, and the only one that I actually liked was actual malicious adware.
Looking forward to seeing good suggestions in this thread.
Definitely recommend Heliboard.
I’ve been following Google’s material 3 since its release. There’s pretty good examples of it, like the calculator app, but half of google’s own apps don’t follow their own guidelines, and they keep making changes to stray away and make their designs even uglier. Gboard was one of the final hopes for google’s design. this better be a bug or something
Gboard is so far the only one i know that actually works with my use case. Swiping with multiple languages active at once, and actually figuring out what I want to type.
I’m running it without Google services or network access.
SwiftKey also does this!
I really, really want to switch to a less, uh, commercial keyboard but none of the ones typically praised here (for good reason) support multilingual swiping.
I switched to Heliboard and I couldn’t be more happier! It is just as good as any proprietary keyboards.
g what? I only know Heliboard
Don’t use gboard, rather download a keyboard from F-Droid and avoid the keylogging :-)
Which one do you use? I haven’t found one that works as well as the Google one yet
FUTO keyboard, Seriously, it’s way better than every other option I’ve looked into. Has material you design support.
Also a l lot of cool in development features like on-device text correction and speech to text with local LLM processing.
Futo is great unless you constantly switch between several languages. 🥲
idk 2 klicks to switch a language works well enough for me with futo.
Simple keyboard. I went minimalistic
HeliBoard is pretty nice
For anyone like me who is still hanging on to gboard for swipe,
I forgot until now you could download a swipe library for heliboard Here by picking raw and then uploading it to heliboard in advanced settings>load gesture typing library.
Thank you, I reinstalled Heli after your comment.
I’ve been using FUTO which is free and open source, has pretty good gesture typing, very good voice to text, and does not connect to the internet. I’m happy with it, but I’m also an idiot and most things make me happy.
FUTO which is free and open source
It is neither free (as in freedom), nor open source).
It is source-available.
I stand corrected.
For the love of Christ how do I change the FUTO dictionary to recognize curse words?? It’s so unnecessarily puritan
Just open the main settings and there’s a category called personal dictionary.
Reminds me of this
Circles are the worst possible shape in terms of making efficient use of the limited screen space available on a phone. The screen is rectangular and nearly everything we display falls into rectangular arrangements. Using circles just means there is less room on each key to show useful information, like the long-hold functions.
I’m not opposed to change, but change entirely for the sake of change usually produces bad results.
I use GBoard (yeah I know, it’s just really good, but yes I am aware of the privacy concerns), but I use it without shapes. The letters and hold-characters are just… there, placed around in a qwerty arrangement. No “buttons”, so to say. I hope they don’t remove that functionality.
I’m right there with you. I hate the current trend of rounded corners on everything. I know designers say it is more aesthetically pleasing, but to me it just looks like wasted space.
Depending on what you’re looking at, the goal is rarely to have stuff crammed into every pixel of the screen, at least on products that are well designed
I know that’s rarely the goal, but maybe it should be more of the goal. Sick of every app and webpage having these yawning chasms of useless white space
Try giving us back a fucking physical keyboard. Touchscreens fucking suck.
I’d really love a modern smartphone with a t9 keypad. I used to be able to type almost as fast on t9 as on a real keyboard. I miss it so much.
There’s an app for that
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.github.sspanak.tt9
It’s not as good as a physical numpad, but it gets the job done
Thanks! The lack of a tactile board is a lot of the problem though
I disagree, but to each their own. You do have a potential option here:
Late-stage tech bros, devoid of innovation and flailing at their precious cup game.
I’m so over this garbage. RIP smartphones.
FUTO keyboard. Try it. Say bye to gboard.
Is it actually called futo? Nothing shows up searching it in fdroid
Yes but I use obsidian not fdroid
Obtanium?
Its another app store. heres futos webpage. https://github.com/futo-org/android-keyboard
I meant is obtanium what you used, think you mixed up that and obsidian the note taking app but found obtanium through futos site
Oh. You’re right. I did get the name mixed up.
I periodically try FUTO. It’s a great keyboard, except for its swiping support. That seems to be gradually improving, but it isn’t quite there yet. Unfortunately that is how I do all my typing, so I keep going back to GBoard. I look forward to leaving it for good.
This has been my issue with every single FOSS keyboard. I can’t live without swipe.
Edit: Forgot you could download a swipe library for heliboard Here by picking raw and then uploading it to heliboard in advanced settings>load gesture typing library.
I have added the swipe library to FUTO. It works, but not well enough for me. (That may be my clumsy swiping, but the issue remains.) I estimate that it gets about one word in four wrong. GBoard is still wrong about one time in ten, but at that rate, swiping and correcting is still much faster for me than traditional typing.
Ahh. I only use it occasionally. I’m bad at spelling and need the word predictions too much.
I’m using Yandex Keyboard #FuckGoogle
Using a Yandex product is hardly better than using something from Google.
I’m aware, but I like how Yandex Keyboard looks. FOSS alternatives aren’t that pretty, at least for me.
Futo with amoled dark purple theme is actually slick as hell imo
Looks awful
Heliboard is the best right now
It really is. Funny enough, I use the rounded style icons.
Is it better than FUTO?
I hadn’t heard of this one before; but a search of the play store is giving zero results. This one require side-loading?
You can install it with fdroid.
I wish there were a different gesture typing library to use… It makes so many annoying incorrect predictions.
idk I prefer florisboard more in general
but currently they don’t have any autocorrect or swipe typing
I wanna switch to FOSS alternatives but swiping is either funky (FUTO) or not available for now (Floris). I ended up downgrading gboard to an older version since all this boat (especially the bitmoji sticker nonsense) really grinds my gears.
Get Heliboard and then download a gesture library such as this: https://github.com/erkserkserks/openboard/blob/master/app/src/main/jniLibs/arm64-v8a/libjni_latinimegoogle.so
Heliboard is on F-Droid.
Oh my gosh, I don’t think info like this is found anywhere on the internet, thank you.
Thank you so much internet stranger. Just made the switch!
Did you try Heliboard? It can be setup to swipe, though I mostly tap type. When i have used the swipe it has worked well though. I have been using it for over a year now and really like it.
Swiping seems to work fine on Heliboard (I guess because it uses the same proprietary library as gboard)
See, I guess my problem is I never liked gboard’s swipe algorithms back when I used gboard. Cause man heliboard’s swiping with the gboard library really pisses me off sometimes lol
