2y ago

Looking for an alternative Keyboard app

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!

49 comments

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.
- I'm getting frustrated with OpenBoard
  Underscore is only accessible with the symbols button.
  After tapping on a wrong word and tapping on a different suggested word, I often end up with an extra space.
  No emoji search 😟
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?
- I ended up getting it on FDroid, but why is Thumb Key $20 on the play store?
  
  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.
- Wow I just checked this out earlier today!
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.
- Swift key is honestly the best one I have used. Plus now I found the adaptive theme
  
  I didn't even know it had an adaptive theme! Now I gotta look for it and give it a try.
- 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.
  
  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.
- Love SwiftKey. this is the way.
- 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.
  
  Sounds like Bing AI wrote this 😂
I use AnySoftKeyboard. It's open source and has gesture typing as well as a lot of UIs. It has a lot of languages.
- 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.
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.
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!
- 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).
Been using AnySoftKeyboard for many years now. Highly recommend it
- 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.
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
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.
- I enjoy that it can only be described as "wildly different" lol
- I assume this is what you're talking about? It appears the "Multi-locale typing" functionality is still not available :/ Play store link seems dead.
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.
- 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.
  
  I am trying it now. So far so good. Def better than I remember it. Will see after it learns some more
@pathief Openboard is awesome ❣️ Also just resize the keyboard around 106% and it will be more comfortable😺
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.
I use Thumb-Key, which is available both in the Play Store and F-Droid. The layout is pretty unusual but I really like it, and the main developer (one of Lemmy's creators) really cares about privacy.
- I've been trying out Thumb-Key for a few minutes, and wow, that would take a while to get used to.
  This comment was written with Thumb-Key in just 3 minutes!
  
  Haha yeah, it did take 2-3 days for me to get up to speed with it, it does not work like a typical keyboard at all.
- The only one I see in the Play Store costs $20 and has no reviews and no description on how it works. Looks like someone stole the open source version and stuck it on the Play Store.
  Oddly, it links to the git hub.
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
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.
- 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.
Openboard with swipe is the current champ 💪
Since using Fleksy I literally cannot use any other keyboard
- 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.
I use anysoft keyboard its pretty good
well you could block access to internet for gboard

49 comments