What's the best open source keyboard for android?
What's the best open source keyboard for android?
EDIT: Thanks, guys! I ended up downloading Heliboard from f-droid :)
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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.
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U have nerfed my typing speed by 99% with thumb key. Its fun tho
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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.
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Gonna stick with it for a bit, and check the other one out. Some words are already coming out quicker. Thanks for the tips
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Do you also know if any of them support multi language spell checking?
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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.
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Thanks, I'll try it again
EDIT: It works well
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It should be noted that Heliboard does not "have glide typing" but rather it supports loading the proprietary Google swype library.
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One that's two years old at that. Its not the best solution, but it's the only one we have if you absolutely need glide typing.
It hitches up sometimes and I find myself getting the wrong words more than other glide typing solutions from closed source keyboards, but it's not horrible.
Sorry I wasn't more clear on this in my original post.
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Oh wow, I've abandoned Thumbkey on a Fold, but I didn't know of Flickboard.
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Hey thanks for posting info about various keyboards. I'm typing this on flickboard. I downloaded it after reading your post. The circle to capitalize the center letter is a little wonky for me but otherwise so far so good.
I like trying non-standard keyboards since they might work better and there's no physical form constraints so why not.
My all time favorite keyboard was minuum, but it wasn't open source so I stopped using it when I started to care about that stuff.
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After watching that vid, I'm sad to see that it's no longer being developed and that the devs didn't leave any open source behind. :( That would have been really cool to try out.
Good rule of thumb to capitalize letters with circle is just to make the circle as large as it can go within the keyboard area. It doesn't have to be centered around the key, just needs to start on the key. For center I usually just circle down from the key as far as I can.
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