this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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Hi friends. My quest to remove Google products from my life continues.

I've always been very fearful of swapping keyboard apps. I can think of no better way to track someone than to bug their keyboard. How can I trust any keyboard software, really? My wishlist:

  • Something that addresses my privacy concerns
  • Supports both english and portuguese dictionaries at the same time
  • Has a dark theme
  • Is available on some sort of store, so I don't have to download APKs for every single update

Thanks!

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Lots of mentions of OpenBoard here. There is a fork that is under development now, and I am writing this with it now. It is not on F-Droid yet.

FlorisBoard and AnySoft are good, but each has enough annoyances that I come back to OpenBoard, which has its own annoyances, but for me are a bit less annoying.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

I'm getting frustrated with OpenBoard

  1. Underscore is only accessible with the symbols button.
  2. After tapping on a wrong word and tapping on a different suggested word, I often end up with an extra space.
  3. No emoji search 😟
[–] can 15 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

If you're in for something wildly different one of the lemmy devs made something.

Oh, and regarding your point about stores, have you heard of Obtanium?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I ended up getting it on FDroid, but why is Thumb Key $20 on the play store?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago

Many developers have their FOSS apps as paid apps in the play store, so that people who really want to support the dev can do so from the play store itself.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Wow I just checked this out earlier today!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)
  1. download F-droid appstore, all apps on there are open source which by nature reduces privacy concerns and if they do have features which impact privacy there will be a warning about what it does.
  2. search through a few of the keyboard apps and find one that catches your eye, preferably one still occasionally updated within past year I found one I liked and trust but don't have my phone with me, think it was called 'simple keyboard' or something. Happy hunting!
[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

Actually, reading through some of the other comments, someone mentioned an OpenBoard fork with swipe functionality and it's actually working very well! Typing is responsive, prediction gets most of my words on the first go, and the backspace deletes the word instead of single letters (which is a preference I like).

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

I use AnySoftKeyboard. It's open source and has gesture typing as well as a lot of UIs. It has a lot of languages.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Same, have tried openboard as well and this won out. Does some things better than other keyboards but still behind others, only thing I'm missing is cursor swiping along the spacebar but not a deal breaker.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

This is a treat to see is gesture touring on that keyboard actually works. In not correcting and errors that it makes.

Hmm, seems kinda mid.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)

Holy crap do I feel left out. I've been using SwiftKey since before M$ purchased it and since then it has gotten better (except that stupid Bing hub AI BS). I think I've been using SwiftKey for like 9 years now.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Same here. I use it on all my devices and I am so used to it, that I can't use another keyboard. Also, for me autocorrect on SwiftKey is way better than on gboard.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Also same. Sometimes it decides typos are things that I want in my custom dictionary and will start replacing real words with gibberish, and then I have the same dilemma as OP, trying out a ton of different keyboards before eventually reverting to a clean install of SwiftKey.

Weird typo corrections and MS ownership aside, I really like how SwiftKey works and struggle to use anything else.

[–] can 3 points 10 months ago

You can just long press on the gibberish and it won't suggest it again.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Talking about autocorrect weirdnesses, my keyboard (SwiftKey) seems to have a strange fascination with apostrophe s. Whenever I type a plural version of a word which is ending in s, it will autocorrect to apostrophe s!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Swift key is honestly the best one I have used. Plus now I found the adaptive theme

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I didn't even know it had an adaptive theme! Now I gotta look for it and give it a try.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Neither did I. Pretty sure I never really looked after I got my note 8 when it came out. Only got a new phone a week or two ago. No idea when it came out.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Honestly I'm surprised SwiftKey still uses those super basic themes. Looking at the adaptive theme it reminds me of the stock theme

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I never really looked for anything crazy. Basic material was fine for me

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I just imagine a world where the material folks and the over the top theme folks can coexist on the same keyboard app lol.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Love SwiftKey. this is the way.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Bing AI rocks! It's so cool how it works with SwiftKey to make typing easier and faster. I love how it can suggest words, emojis, and even GIFs based on what I'm writing. It also helps me with spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Bing AI is like a smart friend who always knows what to say.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Sounds like Bing AI wrote this πŸ˜‚

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It did, I wanted to see if anyone would catch on πŸ˜„

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

Lol good one

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

I really like Florisboard, but the largest difference between that and Openboard is that Florisboard doesn't have spellcheck. I leave my keyboard in permanent Spanish, which I use for English as well as there is only one letter difference between the alphabets

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

First off, you have nothing at all to fear when changing keyboards, they are all switchable easily through the notification dropdown.

For something wildly different, I'd recommend Thumb-Key, it takes a while to get used to it but I've gotten faster and more accurate with it than with a normal keyboard.

Otherwise Openboard is really good, and there's a fork of it too if you like swipe typing.

[–] can 2 points 10 months ago

I enjoy that it can only be described as "wildly different" lol

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Been using AnySoftKeyboard for many years now. Highly recommend it

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Yep, using the same. Very good for switching between languages, and a good selection of different keyboards for foreign languages. I use an English one, and a German one with the Umlauts as popups instead of a "complete" keyboard with the Umlauts as separate keys.

Downside: Completion is not as smart as the default keyboard, but that is easily f-ed up anyway if you post/write in several languages, so while the completion is simpler, at least it uses the matching dictionary.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

OpenBoard is a free and open source keyboard for Android.

If you want more Google-free software, research for alternatives on F-droid. An alternative app store for Android that specializes on FLOS software. OpenBoard is available on F-droid. An experimental fork with swipe typing is also available.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The swipe typing on the fork works very well. I would advise people to no be turned off by the "experimental" tag, as I have used this fork for a year with no issues at all.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I am trying it now. So far so good. Def better than I remember it. Will see after it learns some more

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Been using Florisboard for a few months and really liked it. Just a couple of days ago I discovered "Unexpected Keyboard" and I'm giving it shot. Very different.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

@pathief Openboard is awesome ❣️ Also just resize the keyboard around 106% and it will be more comfortable😺

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I use Typewise. It's not open source but there is a offline version. Both of your needed languages are available. Unfortunately the price is very high. But the honeycomb layout is pretty good, once you are used to it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Tried it, think it's a great idea. I used for a week in a half but didn't to commit to buying it for the double dictionary. I just couldn't get used to it and it's particularly bad with accents.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Although Swype has been dead for quite a while now, that keyboard has been the best for swipe texting I've ever found. I tried Gboard, sucks. OpenBoard doesn't have swipe functionality (that I've found), and am using AnySoft right now, with minimal success. I have to keep backspacing to retype words, or manually type them, sometimes my swipes don't register into words, its just really annoying.

I wish someone would rebuild Swype so i could go back to it.

Edit: someone mentioned an OpenBoard fork that enables swipe texting and it's great! So, if you're looking for swipe, that's my reco

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Openboard with swipe is the current champ πŸ’ͺ

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I use anysoft keyboard its pretty good

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Since using Fleksy I literally cannot use any other keyboard

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I've been using Fleksy for years but there are some apps that don't work well with it. Notably, Connect for Lemmy. Backward swiping for deletes only does one word at a time and up/down swiping for managing autocorrect doesn't work either.

There are a few other apps with their own quirks as well. 90% of the time it's great though.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 10 months ago

well you could block access to internet for gboard