I use Gboard.
The main things I like about it are:
- Very customizable (I like having number row always visible, and having long press for symbols on each letter).
- Has gif support built in.
My biggest pain point is:
- It auto corrects words that are spelled correctly to other words. I type “our” and it changes to “out”, I recently typed “purpose” and it changed it to “purple”. Autocorrect is awesome and necessary, but I hate that it corrects words to other words and not just typos. I wish I could find a keyboard that has the things I like without this annoyance.
Am I looking for a unicorn? Let me know! 😄
I love Heliboard it is a fork from Openboard. It has themes and is 100% offline
It’s there a better swiping library for heliboard? The one they suggest is a lot worse than gboard’s.
I don’t use swiping, I have no clue 😅
Haven’t used heliboard so I’m not sure if its different but have you tried this one?
That’s odd, it should be identical. The library linked in their FAQ is a package extracted from Google apps.
Maybe it’s an old package? The quality is noticeably worse.
Does it have the things I called out as liking about Gboard?
- Customizable, yes
- Gif, no
Got it, thanks!
It’s insanely customizable; you can change all of the special characters to be anything else, as well as their positions.
Nice. That’s actually even more customizable than I need. How does it do with the correcting correctly spelled words thing?
I had the same dilemma. Switched to HB and added in FUTO voice to replace Googles voice to text. SO doesn’t like that it doesn’t learn like Swiftkey does, but I like it because you can set it’s aggressiveness of the autocorrect.
I’ll have to check this one out I think. Lots of people in here recommending it. I’m guessing it’s not on Google play?
I install directly from the developer’s GitHub using Obtainium. However F-Droid is probably the more common method.
Is Fdroid like a third party app store app or something? I see people talk about it a lot on here but I don’t know what it is.
No, it’s on F-Droid, which is better.
How do you change the positions of letters and characters?
I dont think you can do letters, but under advanced settings you can edit the JSON config for positioning of everything else. Perhaps I’m wrong on letters and just haven’t seen it.
The amount of people on here that are okay with a corporation phoning home everything you type is a bit scary. Googles Gboard and Microsoft’s SwiftKey are a privacy nightmare. Check out FUTO: https://keyboard.futo.org/
- always offline
- voice input
- swipe typing
- predictive text
- auto correct
- personalization
Thank you!
I dropped gboard for privacy, switched to an open source option but struggled to get on with it .
Now typing on Futo and immediately loving it. Much appreciated.
If this is as good as it seems at first glance I’ll definitely be paying for this.
Thanks for the recommendation, I just installed it!
When every fucking app is a privacy nightmare, it can be a huge slog finding alternatives for everything. Keyboard apps were on my list but you just made it super easy.
It’s what I use right now and it’s great in many aspects but I do still miss the graceful transition between languages that swiftkey was offering. With this I need to switch manually every time. With swiftkey I could write directly in any language and change in the same sentence and it could deal with it.
I kind of hate takes like these because its such a false equivalence. People aren’t OK with it, but the vast majority of people don’t have time to fight this battle when every single aspect of modern technology is in a constant arms race to do more and more surveillance.
It’s great there are people like you who want to promote more private alternatives, and even better that people are making more private alternatives, but the reality is most foss apps are far inferior user experiences to corporate apps. Until that changes it’s always going to be an uphill battle to convince people to switch, and it’s not because they’re “ok with corporate surveillance”. That isn’t even in the calculation to begin with and it’s not making any friends or building any bridges to imply that about people. You would help your cause a lot if you took a less judgemental approach to spreading the word about it.
Sorry for the soapbox, but I see this attitude on here a lot and it really misses the mark and does damage to an otherwise worthy cause (spreading the word about better software). I don’t think you mean anything bad when you say this, but I just want you to understand how it comes off to people who aren’t invested in that lifestyle.
This is the first non gboard keyboard that I don’t immediately feel uncomfortable typing om
Looks great, but without an extended QERTZ layout I’m out. Switching from SwiftKey to HeliBoard now, since it has ÄÖÜ on there by default for a german layout.
Alright let’s try this keyboard out. Works pretty well, swipe not great for anything with a mostly horizontal pattern (“swipe”) or anything with a double letter. Just gotta tweak some functions like hold times and delete button functionality. Of course the swipes need to learn my patterns, at least I hope they will.
Major point deduction for not having keyboard support for my second language. And the delete function removing the entire last word when swiping makes it actually infuriating
You should leave a review, I am not affiliated with them
I’ve recently replaced Gboard with Heliboard. The three main things I want in an Android keyboard are as follows:
- Word suggestions when typing.
- Glide typing.
- Not being super creepy about my data.
Hwliboard does all those things and is super customisable as well.
I’ve seen a few people mention this one so far. How does it stack up against my wants and dislike?
I don’t use the gif keyboard or autocomplete, so I comment about that. but it’s so much more customizable than gboard. Honestly surprised you found gboard to be customizable because in my experience it’s one of the least customizable ones out there.
Maybe customizable is the wrong word, but I like the way I have it setup and I’ve found some other keyboards can’t replicate it.
It’s there a better swiping library for heliboard? The one they suggest is a lot worse than gboard’s.
FUTO Keyboard. Its newer. Still needs improvements to gesture typing. Overall I like it.
The only thing I’m missing is the ability to use multiple languages at once.
It’s pretty easy to switch, es posible cambiar con una toca. You can map it to a long press or swipe or use a dedicated key.
I have 4 languages i need to constantly switch between. It becomes frustrating after a while
How would you like to switch between them? I use 3 regularly with different layouts and I’ve never had an issue. For me, a keyboard swipe is quicker than a long press and tap to select, or a tap on a single button. It could be any of the above. You can also have the switching button in the top menu or by the space bar.
Is there a better switching method for you?
I’ve heard people say that the gesture typing is not great, but I’ve never had an issue.At least not more than any other keyboard.
For me, the voice typing is literally the best I’ve ever used.
I don’t think there is a free and private keyboard that has gifs, stickers, etc. but I do like the way FUTO handles emoji.
Does it have the features I called out that I like about Gboard?
I don’t think there is a free/private keyboard with gifs or stickers. There’s gboard, SwiftKey, Samsung keyboard, and increasingly sketchy keyboards from there on down.
I’d be happy to pay for one if it was good enough.
Oh, I meant free as in not proprietary. Free as in freedom.
I remember hearing about Fleksy keyboard years ago, although I can’t really attest to it. It seems to have far fewer trackers than most proprietary keyboards, and just for analytics. Most other keyboards you find will send your data to advertisers or worse.
So far, most of the ones suggested here are free and private, meaning that they belong to the community and not to a company, and they do not collect or sell your data. That may be a factor for you or it may not, but I think a lot of people on Lemmy tend to care about it.
Fleksy has gif support built-in. It’s the only one outside of Gboard and SwiftKey that does afaik
I use typewise. It feels like there is more space for easy button and i no longer accidentally press the space button
A bee posted this
I don’t know how you would… Where is it!?
Next to f and h
It takes some getting used to but i am pretty happy with it! You swipe up on the buttons for capitals and it has some gestures that makes deleting and restoring quite easy
Interesting. Admittedly, I’m almost always using my phone one-handed, but I know some people use two hands.
You dont need to press both space buttons simultaneously to add a space 😉
The keyboard itself is great, I just feel like the auto correction keeps doing everything in it’s power to fuck up what I typed, more so than before I switched.
Do you use multiple languages? And if ye. Do you have a pro/paid version that switches between languages automatically?
Yes to both (English/German).
It might be the issue. I have the same with english and danish. I have asked in the telegram group about it
Wow this one is wild. I kind of like it at a glance but also I would have to relearn to type 🤔
Try it for a few days. You get into it real quick and it has a lot of useful features.
Its not that difficult actually! They even have a mini game and a very good tutorial in the app!
I feel that its gotten a lot easier to type since i got this and a lot less typos
The less typos thing seems like it would be true even at a glance. That was my first thought seeing this.
I absolutely adore this keyboard, I just wish they’d add a voice input button so I could use FUTO’s voice to text with it.
Heliboard, very customisable and doesn’t send all my typing to a MAGMA company’s servers.
Nice, this is the first FOSS board I see that can actually replace my SwiftKey layout. Thanks for the suggestion
Did you know you can turn off autocorrect?
I’ve been using Swype since its inception and I’ve stuck with it after it was called SwiftKey and still use it now it’s owned by Microsoft.
Gboard is okay enough but I’ve gotten more used to SwiftKey.
Same, been using it long before it was bought by Microsoft. It has customizations I like, and (when it works properly) I can copy and paste between my phone and computer.
That sounds like a really nice feature (the copy between devices). Does it have gifs built in?
Yeah
I’ve turned off autocorrect long time ago. Suggestions are fine. The one click more when I’m wrong is worth my time and I’m automatically educated to type correctly.
I like autocorrecting typos, I don’t like autocorrecting words into other words. As far as I’ve found you can’t have one without the other. Correct me if I’m wrong though.
No that’s correct. It cannot distinguish between typos and different words
It’s a shame. It doesn’t seem like it would be hard to implement one that doesn’t change correctly spelled words at all.
Well SwiftKey advertised with some AI (actually just algorithm) that could analyse the words you typed before and glean from context what you are trying to say and correct accordingly. I find it’s wrong more often than not so I keep autocorrect off. Also I use SwiftKey in two languages, English and my native language, Dutch. It does not anticipate in which language it should predict at all. It mostly just favours English.
Yeah that’s exactly the kind of thing I don’t want. If I wrote a word and it’s spelled correctly, I wish autocorrect would leave it alone instead of incorrectly guessing a different word. Oh well, one can dream.
No way to know if you meant to typo type or typo
If you type the wrong word, it will underline it and you can click on it, then tap on the correct auto suggested word. Very easy
Gboard is pretty good. I switched off Swiftkey because Gboard has the lil space bar cursor thing. Swipe typing is pretty great, and the predictions are fine.
I would prefer a non-Google keyboard, but I haven’t found one that’s easy to install and works the way I want it to.
Just switched to Futo after years and years of gboard. Its a 1:1 replacement, give it a try.
Not exactly 1:1. The main thing that I still miss is multi lingual typing. It’s not too big a deal to just switch the languages when I need to, especially since I only use 2. But that’s still more than I needed to do with Gboard or Heliboard.
I’ll give it a shot, thanks!
Yeah that’s exactly my experience, too. Nothing else I’ve tried has all the features I want.
SwiftKey. Yes, I hate it being from Microsoft. But has most of the pros already mentioned in this thread and a some important features (for me) that I haven’t found with other keyboard:
I text a lot in Spanish, Portuguese and English; sometimes in French. I can use any of those languages with any preferred layout (qwerty, azerty) or as I do, Spanish layout as a base but from there, I get all characters needed to write properly such as ñ, ç, æ, ê.
Prediction is outstanding, I can start a phrase in one language and continue with other and still get very accurate suggestions. It has been my default keyboard long before Microsoft acquired the company and, for now, big corporate enshittification has been slow. En conclusión y para sumarizar: j’aime bien le SwiftKey clavier, ele tem funções que nenhum outro tem.
AnySoftKeyboard.
It has a various styles, and a neat way of switching languages and their layouts.
Does it have the features I called out that I like about Gboard?
It’s customizable, though you can’t, say, arbitrary drag keyboard keys around on an Android device. There are add-on layouts, and it’s possible to create those.
I don’t know what “GIF” support involves. It has some support for various Unicode emojis. If this is some sort of Android-native rich text field functionality to embed arbitrary image files, not that I’m aware of, but I may also just not use any apps that support it…I think all the apps I use may just edit regular text.
It does not support swiping, something that I don’t use but which some people do rely on.
The two most-significant things that it doesn’t do that I would like:
-
It does not have the ability to attach arbitrary macro text strings to a key (well, absent from creating a new keyboard, I suppose), something that I have wanted.
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It doesn’t support the “drag on spacebar to move cursor in a text field” functionality that some Android software keyboards have.
Of the open-source keyboards, it’s the one that I find the best.
I believe – not in front of my device – that you can adjust the aggressiveness of text correction or disable it.
You can set it up to keep numbers visible.
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It is very customizable, even with add on modules.
I don’t use many of the options, though. I don’t like long press. No idea what you mean with GIF support.
The autocorrect usually asks whether I accept the correction or not.
Cool thanks for the response. Gif support is a button that lets you search and insert gifs from giphy. I use it a lot because I like memes 😅
It took a few weeks to get used to it and a few more to get comfortable, but now I don’t think I can go back. Before when I messed up, I would keep repeating the mistake until I was forced to slow down. Now I can get 40-50 WPM when I try.
I do miss some things but they really aren’t deal breakers:
- Clipboard History
- Emoji Search
- Autofill Integration
I have been using Thumb Key for a few months and while I generally like it, I have not been able to figure out how to remove things like the voice typing, pasting, and undo shortcuts. Every so often I accidentally hit undo while typing, which just erases my whole message irrecoverably since my other thumb hit the next key right after. I wish I could remove all those swipe controls on the side altogether since I never use them.
Just installed it and am finding it very slow going so far. Why are all the letters randomly placed?
It’s not random! The placement is based on letter frequency.
So not a pattern an actual person can spot, whilst not being totally random.
Yeah you can’t really “infer” where a letter is, it just takes time to learn the loiations by heart. I think I have used this for 6 months or so, and I’m able to write 40wpm without looking at the keyboard. But damn was it slow in beginning
It’s a pattern that will feel more natural the more you use it
I’m using Heliboard a few months ago, I prefer privacy over personalization
Currently, I just use GBoard, but I’m following the development of Florisboard rather closely.
I just installed the floris 4.0 beta earlier. I think once they ship 4.0 and offer a type-ahead suggestion model Floris’ll be worth considering as a serious Gboard replacement.
So far Floris is the best Gboard replacement candidate I’ve found.
Thanks for mentioning this. As a current florisboard user I didn’t know I have so much to look forward to!
OpenBoard. Has what I need in terms of customization and I can turn off word prediction/correction (not sure if it even has it to begin with). Used to use Swiftkey several years ago but i like OpenBoard more nowadays.
Try Heliboard
It is a fork of openboard. Openboard is basically dead
I like correction of typos and prediction, I just don’t like correcting words into other words. I haven’t found a way to have one without the other. Correct me if I’m wrong.
it’s not easy!
That seems interesting, but it feels like it would be slower than thumb-key? How long have you been using it, and how high wpm do you have? For reference, I have used thumb-key for 6 months or so, and can achieve 40-45 wpm
thumb-key
I’ve used Thumb-key a little while too. 40 wpm is quite impressive!
I’m still very slow with 8Vim. Not sure if with more training you can get to decent speed, time will tell.
It’s really cool and well made though.
