A good reminder to stop using gboard. Others have pointed to alternatives. Heliboard is another FOSS option that's had this for years.
this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2025
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I wish Heliboard was usable, but it has so many small but show-stopping bugs or omissions.
I know, I know. Should fix it myself and do a pull request. Hopefully one day got time for that, like fixing the over-scaled emoji picked (that breaks kaomoji due to the scaling) or the lack of a search box there. It's easily the closest FOSS keyboard to the big two (Gboard and SwiftKey), so with a bit more work it could really compete with them I feel.
I tried heliboard. It apparently kicks ass on the back end but the front end sucks and that's the part I use.
FUTO Keyboard is the one!
With FUTO it feels nearly perfect, only issue is that in daily use I write a weird mix of German and English even in the same sentence, and hence I need full mixed-language input which it doesn't seem to support (yet).
For a second I really thought I had now finally found an alternative to Gboard but unfortunately the swiping detection is really poor and I need it to be able to use German and English at the same time. So I guess it's still back to Gboard. :(
The swipe feature isn't quite done yet, they have a dataset they are building that you can contribute to in a fun way if you want.
Soon the swipe feature will be good.
Thanks for the recommendation, trying FUTO out and really liking it. Gboard posts end in good FOSS recs.
Really? I've been using Heliboard (as a replacement for florisboard) and I have had literally no complaints works just as well as gboard did for me. I 100% recommend Heliboard I think its 10/10
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I tried to love Heliboard too, had similar issues.
Moved to FUTO Keyboard after a recommendation on here, really happy with it
Thanks for the recommendation! It looks really good so far. Well, except for the swipe typing. If they can perfect swipe typing, I'd be so impressed. Even Gboard does it terribly. I noticed they have a public website to help train swiping. That's neat. https://swipe.futo.org/
After I tap a suggestion , if I hit a punctuation key , it leaves a space after the word . (like in that sentence .) Gboard removes the space automatically, and Heliboard doesn't add it to begin with.
Turns out, you can turn off automatic spaces entirely, and that feels better.
There's a github for issue tacking and a Discord for discussions. These are good signs. I really like what I see so far.
If you want to keep using the automatic space setting, set it to insert on suggestions and punctuation. That setting automatically moves the space from after the word to after the punctuation.
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Herebisbmybissuevwithbheliboard
That shakes me to my core. Lol
I was looking for an alternative to fossify, thanks for the recommendation
Gboard combines Japanese and German in a way that is properly usable. I wish there was a better alternative. That being said, support for east Asian languages (and easy switching) isn't relevant for most.
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It took a year and a half to develop an "undo" feature? WTF is happening at Google?
I have this plus several other features like shifting left and right on the spacebar with FlorisBoard
If by shifting left and right you mean moving the cursor, that has been in gboard for 5+ years.
fair enough although I'm more interested in FOSS🌱 apps rather than proprietary and especially Google🗑️ apps
Are FOSS apps inherently for newbs? Since you gave it the sprout marker from FFXIV?
oh uhh I used the sprout emoji from FlorisBoard to symbolize growth.
Are FOSS apps inherently for newbs?
not really sure how to answer this as Free Open Source Software (FOSS) apps are just more trustworthy than proprietary apps.
It mostly depends on the development age of the project.
Being brutally honest FOSS apps that are:
- Newer tend to be more clunky and are harder to trust because the dev might be inexperienced and might not continue development.
- Older might have some crust but are more trustworthy as the dev is likely to polish and iron out any cruft.
So "Are FOSS apps inherently for newbs?" is kinda hard to answer.
If instead I was asked: "Is x FOSS app easier to use than y proprietary app?" this I could probably give you a more definitive satisfactory answer.
Haha, thanks for giving it a serious answer, I was just making a silly joke. 😅🫶
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Yes but the space bar has other functions in gboard so it's a 50/50 shot if you move 5 chars back or activate a random thing you never want to use.
Swiping on the space bar only moves characters, the faster/longer you swipe, the more characters or words you swipe. There are no other functionalities that overlap or conflict with this
I have multiple languages on gboard...If you're too slow with the swipe it will open up the language selection menu. There are a total of three buttons to switch languages
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Oh cool, thanks for sharing this!
... wait, you guys live without undo button??
- HeliBoard gang
Same here
- FUTO gang
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Haha florisboard already had that
Fun fact it's always had undo if you switch to the Japanese keyboard
I have absolutely no idea why that's the only way you've been able to do it until now
it's 2025 and having a freaking CTRL key on soft keyboards is still a luxury and obscure thing.
Why? Give us the CTRL key, and that's that.
About time.
Wow, it took them this long to include a backspace button? Jeez...
(yes I only read the headline, no I'm not going to read the page, yes I think it's funny, and no I don't care that you don't. thanks for coming to my ted talk.)
Nice. I love Gboard. One of the few things Google nails.
I'm hoping it works well. Biggest thing keeping me from switching is how easy it is to switch to Japanese and Chinese, as someone who enjoys music in both languages but can barely speak any. This will definitely help if I accidentally deleted something in either of those languages while looking up a song or trying to translate something. Or just if I'm typing on my txt file app and accidentally erase something I need, since the app has no undo buttons.
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