EDIT: Thanks, guys! I ended up downloading Heliboard from f-droid :)
Heliboard which is an active fork of OpenBoard.
I’ve been using it for a while. It does most that gboard does, but the predictions aren’t as good of course.
Yeah, I’ve been using it for about a year now. It’s a little frustrating that it will learn my misspellings before it suggests a proper replacement, but otherwise I have no complaints. Direct upgrade over the stock AOSP keyboard.
I’ve had the same problem with HeliBoard learning garbage. I just changed my settings though, and I think it should help:
- Open HeliBoard settings
- Open Text correction settings
- Scroll all the way to the bottom, and turn off “Add words to personal dictionary”
If you scroll all the way to the top again, you can manually manage the personal dictionary, including adding words you do want, and deleting any junk that was added by mistake, before switching that setting off.
I’ve been down this rabbit hole and here’s the haul from Wonderland:
Conventional:
- Heliboard - Has glide typing, but the available library is unstable and old. The most polished.
- Florisboard - Currently under heavy development, but what’s there is more than usable and very well done.
- Unexpected Keyboard - I actually love this one, but as a Fold user I need some auto correct. Uses swipe motions on each key for symbols and punctuation.
Unconventional:
- Thumbkey - A 3x3 grid using taps and swipes to type. I flip flop between this and Heliboard atm. Has circular motions to input caps or numbers. MASSIVE amount of layouts, including language, programmer, writer and more. Easy layout switch key on the fly.
- Flickboard - Same setup as Thumbkey. This would be my go to ever since they added a landscape layout that smart switches on inner Fold screen, but there’s no separate key height for it, so you have to deal with non-uniform on one screen which isn’t easy to type on. Also has circular motion for caps. No numeric, but there’s the option of having a small number column.
- 8vim - The only one of it’s kind since 8pen died. I’m learning this one and it’s great, but wonky on inner Fold screen. Its hard to explain, but you use circular motions around on X wheel to input whole words at a time letter by letter. Start center, drag out into a quadrant, rotate to get your letter, go back to center, without lifting go to your next quadrant for the next letter. When you’re done and back on center, let go to insert space, or you can move out into a quadrant then lift to end without a space. Takes a lot of getting used to.
U have nerfed my typing speed by 99% with thumb key. Its fun tho
Lol I know the pain. It takes a few days to get to acceptable typing speed, but you can get pretty fast (some report 56 wpm which is pretty good for a virtual keyboard).
Just make sure you know what you want between Thumbkey or Messagease layouts. I started with Messagease layout and it was all good until I spotted some really nice Thumbkey programmer layouts and switched.
Gonna stick with it for a bit, and check the other one out. Some words are already coming out quicker. Thanks for the tips
Do you also know if any of them support multi language spell checking?
Heliboard has multiple dictionary support. Florisboard is still in development for this feature, from what I know. Unexpected Keyboard has none by design, being made for termux and programming.
The unconventional list also has none by design, maybe because there’s less of a chance to fat thumb the keys.
Heliboard would be your winner there, for now.
Thanks, I’ll try it again
EDIT: It works well
ive been using heliboard for a while now. no complaints.
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I love it, but it has some fairly big annoying things about it and I’m disappointed to see how little movement there is to fix them in GitHub. The dev seems very insactive.
Thumb-key.
It takes a bit to adapt and create muscle memory but I can’t change it now that I am used to it.
yeah. Takes a bit to get used to but I now have less typos than on regular keyboards. 🙂
I don’t know, but Thumb-Key is written to by a core Lemmy developer, dessalines.
I’ve actually tried everything that was recommended here, but AnySoftKeyboard still fits me the best.
Thumb-Key, hands down!
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Ah I wasn’t aware, I just assumed that even if it’s from its own repository, it is still on F-droid
Edit: reading the license, seems open source enough but I don’t have a legal background so I’m not the most well versed in that stuff, as long as code it open is the bare minimum for me.
even if it’s from its own repository, it is still on F-droid
There is nothing to stop anyone from running their own f-droid repo and distributing non-free software through it, which is what futo is doing.
seems open source enough
This is the definition. Compare it with Futo’s license; it fails to meet both the Open Source Definition and Free Software Definition in several ways. After insisting they could redefine the term for a while (despite the definition’s wide acceptance) and inspiring some of their very vocal fans to promulgate their dishonest argument on their behalf, Futo themselves finally came around and agreed to stop calling their software open source.
This license, plus that the app require microphone access, plus all the AI features, make my BS alarm go bzzz.
Microphone and “AI” models are all private local offline source available. They use a whisper model for speech to text, and a small LLM for next word prediction.
it is, you just can’t understand what open-source means, even though it is in its name
you just can’t understand what open-source means
FYI, nearly everyone (including Futo themselves), except for some Futo fans like yourself who haven’t gotten the memo, agrees that this is the definition of “open source” (and Futo’s license obviously does not qualify).
Other comments in this thread suggesting that Futo keyboard is open source have been deleted as offtopic.
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Whoa, I found the discussion rather insightful 😕
I use Fcitx5 for its Chinese language support.
I used to use Gboard for Cantonese input. I downloaded fcitx5 reading your comment and tried it for some time. There are some features noticeably missing compared to Gboard.
- top numeric row
- single-hand mode
- simplified and traditional characters selection#
# Found it. It’s in the settings bar at the top of the typing area. Click it open and go deep inside it.
What Gboard and fcitx5 both don’t have for Jyutping input is glide typing. I wish fcitx5 have it because it is really what could make me switch and not look back. Gboard in general has better finger tap detection/correction because duh Google had more data to train on. But I will definitely start using fcitx5 because being open source is sufficient for me to switch.
For languages that isn’t supported by its plugins like Japanese, I have to keep using Gboard though.
FlorisBoard
Openboard (fdroid)
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Dammit people stop asking this question I have 5 different keyboards now
Could you specify wether these support physical keyboards? (showing only a toolbar when one is detected). I’m using the default proprietary Kika-keyboard on my device and it’s not great. Microsoft Swiftkey works but is not perfect and not FLOSS.
