Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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125

What is a good keyboard app for Android? (self.privacy)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by Ashen to c/[email protected]

104 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I've been using SwiftKey for over a decade now, and I didn't really realize how potentially horrible it is for privacy. What are some good alternatives you guys can suggest, ideally open source?

My ideal keyboard includes swipe to type and a notepad (to paste certain emoticons like shrug emoji and such).

Thank you!

Edit, for any future lemmings/internet people who want the definitive answer (so far, as of October '23), OpenBoard works great.

Download the latest release apk from here

And if you want swipe typing as well,

Download the "libjni_latinimegoogle.so" file onto your phone from here

Then when you open OpenBoard, go to Advanced and select "Load gesture typing library". When it asks you to select a file, select the "libjni" file and swiping should work just fine.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Does it collect/transmit the keystrokes to their server?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I can't claim to be a 100% sure to be honest, but if the information on their privacy info page is accurate, it shouldn't ask for any android system permissions at all, including internet access:

In particular, MessagEase does not seek Internet access permission.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I installed it. Definitely very different! I'll give it a fair shot though - looks like there's been plenty of thought behind its design.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nice! I hope you will like it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm already liking it - I've switced to it as my main keyboard. I'm actually typing this on my phone (miserably slowly 😂 - it definitely needs practice getting used to.) I think it's a good practice for the memory muscles & the brain! Thanks.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Glad to hear it and I hope Exideas' admittedly questionable support won't be a big issue going forward for you. It hasn't really been for me - the app is pretty solid. It saddens me that novel designs like this never seem to catch on, between public inertia and established corporate actors actively trying to suppress anything new.

[–] aurele 1 points 1 year ago

I'm also using it in blind mode save for the symbols. I really like it so far.