EDIT: Thanks, guys! I ended up downloading Heliboard from f-droid :)
Heliboard which is an active fork of OpenBoard.
I’ve been using Heliboard 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
It should be noted that Heliboard does not “have glide typing” but rather it supports loading the proprietary Google swype library.
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.
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.
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.
Oh wow, I’ve abandoned Thumbkey on a Fold, but I didn’t know of Flickboard.
ive been using heliboard for a while now. no complaints.
Florisboard beta is what I use. Extremely customisable. I think the biggest things that lacks are custom background photo and text-gliding (I ~dont use any of these though).
I made it almost identical to the gboard theme I was using previously and it’s so cool.
Best keyboard so far
Agree.
Wow, I missed the introduction of extensions, thanks! That’s cool
I am a big florisboard fan too, but I can not get autocorrect to work? How did you manage that? Also, I have glide typing, how do you not?
Oh, I don’t use any autocorrect.😅 Does it have one? I know it has autofill, suggestions with dictionaries and spell check, but not sure if it has autocorrect.
I have all of these disabled (I only have the auto-capitalization after a period and auto period after double space).😄
Wait, are you on beta? I think in they have gliding, but it is only for gestures, not typing.
I’ve been using FUTO Keyboard and I’m very happy with it so far. EDIT: It’s not FOSS but the source code is available and you are allowed to copy/modify it, just not to make money from it. That’s good enough for me.
Damn it’s not FOSS? Time to jump ship
it is, except that it places some restrictions on forking the code: changing the donation links and keeping the branding.
So at worst it’s source available.
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.
@freijon the question was specifically about open-source. Is this your first day here?
Anyone, including people who have never been here should be welcomed
@GravitySpoiled Except people who violate the first rule of this community?
Feel free to inspect the source code here: https://github.com/futo-org/android-keyboard
@freijon feel free to learn what “open source” means. Look, considering the number and frequency of posts in this community talking about this issue, you don’t get the benefit of the doubt anymore. People arguing that futo is open source are just spammers. Look around.
No need to be unfriendly. I modified my original comment to make sure everyone understands what they get when they install this keyboard.
Thanks for editing, but I deleted your comment anyway because it was still just recommending something that is not open source.
fyi there is a thread here discussing the moderation of this thread.
Well, this is just stupid. I was trying to share my experience about a cool piece of software I’ve found in the hopes that someone finds it useful. But instead of a friendly discussion, I’m just met with hostility. Unsubscribing.
I don’t know, but Thumb-Key is written to by a core Lemmy developer, dessalines.
what a fantastic way to indicate my turbo nerd status to my friends and family!
FUTO keyboard no doubt, it’s very modern. It has voice typing and swipe typing which is essential to me. It’s also just a nice typing experience.
if I wanted this mod abuse I would’ve stayed on reddit, what are all these removed comments bruh
Sadly this community is on the instance lemmy.ml which is known for mod abuse. Other instances are better
Tho this specifically is admin abuse, which is visible on the modlog. The mods aren’t involved in this one.
Removed by mod
What did Futo do that heliboard didn’t, or what made you end up going with that one?
Voice input is a big one everyone brings up
The UX/UI with FUTO is way better IMO. It basically looks and feels just like Google Keyboard.
Florisboard is highly configurable, it can provide a good keyboard for the avarage user, if a more advanced user sets it up properly
Dude, I had been using the default keyboard from GrapheneOS since I couldn’t find a decent keyboard and gave up on swiping all together. I had heard about the futo keyboard but was unaware how mature it is. I installed it and set it up. I am very pleased! It has a lot of settings, and while the swiping isn’t perfect yet, I can actually feel like it’s learning from my usage. Very encouraging and it really brings me joy.
The Google keyboard was the best for me, but this is really not far behind. Thank you FUTO! Will be donating <3
If you want to train FUTO keyboard’s swipe typing, go to this link. They are sourcing swipe data from the community.
Oh yes I’ve trained it extensively on that website when it first launched! But thanks for the reminder!
IIRC it’s not open source
It’s “open source” but not fully free. You can modify it to your liking, but you cannot modify it commercially.
I like HeliBoard. It automatically switches between the languages I write in.
Yeah heliboard is the only one I’ve found that is actually usable on a day to day. Just wish the autocorrect was better, other than that no complaints.
How do you set it up to do that? I just discovered multilingual typing, but that does not seem to be quite it.
I installed the dictionaries I need and then followed https://github.com/Helium314/HeliBoard/wiki/FAQ#multilingual-typing-type-in-multiple-languages-without-switching-manually
Okay, thanks. The switching between languages is not perfect yet, but works okay. I regularly get suggestions for another language than I am currently typing.
How do you make it switch automatically?
I just start writing in the different language and the suggestions + autocorrect switch for me. All the languages (other than Korean) use the same keyboard layout and for the umlauts I need to hold the aoeu shortly to get the right umlaut, or I just rely on the autocorrect.
Thanks, but couldn’t get it to work. These all fuss about futo decided to check it out, and all languages are working fine. The predictions are also better.
Back to heliboard. I found the setting. In the languages selection, it seems it is only a toggle and to get the menu you need to long press. That needs to be fixed and put the multi language option outside.
I’m currently using OpenBoard but you sold me on that one, thanks!
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 just use futo keyboard
Fyi, the futo keyboard isn’t open source. The license heavily restricts against who can modify it and for what purpose. https://gitlab.futo.org/keyboard/latinime/-/blob/master/LICENSE.md?ref_type=heads
That seems like a open source license to me? The main parts seem to disallow making money from it and commercial use.
That goes against at least one of the fundamental freedoms for FOSS software, but that I mind much. Still, technically but open source.
sounds like an actually great license. tired of companies using open-source plugins in propertiary applications for nefarious purposes
Removed by mod
my comment got removed but i said that non-commercial licenses are good to not let companies use open-source project for their malicious closed source applications. Mods removing this is wild… But they will not silence me no matter which million dollar company they lick up to
Is it vulnerable to enshittification?
Once Luis Rossman dies likely…
Until then, i trust that bro
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.
all I hear is yapping, I can read, modify, and redistribute the source, what’s the big deal?
no, they delete it because they can’t tolerate the truth and they resort to censorship. Orwell has seen this and wrote a book about it
Whoa, I found the discussion rather insightful 😕
I don’t think it is OS
It is. Source code here, license here
That is a non-commercial license, so it is not open source.
Since when is allowing commercial derivative work essential for it to be called open source?
Since always https://opensource.org/osd
Aye thanks, for the privacy aspect tot be somewhat covered I guess it fits the bill in its current state, but not true open source as the question asked then. Found the issue asking them to change but highly doubt they will https://github.com/futo-org/android-keyboard/issues/17
Removed by mod
Fcitx5 for Chinese, and Flickboard for English. Honestly sad that there isn’t a decent open-source keyboard for Japanese though.
There’s Mozc, but it’s oudated and no one maintain it anymore.
True. It doesn’t even install on Android 14.
Thumb-Key, hands down!
I’ve actually tried everything that was recommended here, but AnySoftKeyboard still fits me the best.
FlorisBoard
Preference for AnySoftKeyboard.
Why is there so many censored posts about keyboard apps?
there is a thread about the moderation of this thread here.
