Hey guys, im just got rid of gboard and im already missing the autocorrect and swipe to type features. I know there has to be a privacy friendly option out there. Thank you for your help; im fat fingering every other key, pls save me
I really like Unexpected Keyboard. Doesn’t have swipe or gifs. But I love that all the symbols are available on the main keypad. You just click-swipe for each one.
Unexpected Keyboard is excellent for Termux. Wished it had autocorrect, though.
If you are exploring, I’d suggest giving Unexpected Keyboard a try. You might like it even though there is no autocorrect.
FUTO Keyboard is hands down the best option.
If you have philosophical objections to the FUTO license, then your options are Heliboard and Florisboars. Heliboard is currently better, but Florisboard has promise.
Which one is closest to SwiftKey? I got too used to its placement of symbols/special characters, its arrow keys, its always present number row, and it’s left-handed friendly numpad. Been using it for almost 15 years now so it’s going to be hard to switch to a keyboard that doesn’t have an identical layout. I need to do it, though. Its autocorrect went to shit after Microsoft purchased it and I’ve been wanting to switch for years.
I found switftkey rather buggy, and stopped using it as soon as GBoard added decent multilingual support, so I really can’t remember the key placement. All are pretty heavily customizable, I’d be very surprised if you couldn’t get them to a state where you’re comfortable.
Seconding Skarn’s comment. Heliboard has a lot of options for what is and is not displayed, shortcuts, etc. If you can’t get it the way you want it through the options, a feature in settings allows you to edit the scripting for the layout. I have all the punctuation to the left of the space bar so I don’t put periods between each word. It took me no more than 10 mins to configure that, including wasting time backing up the original script (it has an option to return it to defaults), and I’m a “hobbyist” progammer at most.
This sounds exactly like what I’m looking for. I can’t code but I’m not afraid of scripting. Thank you.
Thank you for this recommendation, it’s exactly what I was looking for to get me off of GBoard.
I like the FUTO keyboard, but it’s just so annoying that it doesn’t support multi-lingual typing and the swipe just isn’t as good as Gboard.
It does support multilingual typing. Rather recent addition.
FUTO: the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog
… I was planning on testing them all here but that’s so good I’ll think I’ll stop there! I see from recent reviews they are working on improving swipe even more :D thank you so much!
Please pay the licensing fee for ongoing development if you plan to use for an extended period👍
I’ll probably jump around a bit now, by if its where I settle, I for sure will. Thanks :)
Doesn’t even detect I am glide typing about half the time. Unusable on my Google Pixel 4a.
Which one of the three I suggested?
FUTO is definitely a bit more resource hungry. Try Heliboard, you need to add a separate library to enable swiping, but it’s definitely way lighter.
Futo. Will try Heliboard once I get Graphene installed, thanks
Giving this a try myself. Interesting that it’s in the Play Store but not F-Droid.
AFAICT their license does not fulfill the OSI definition and is therefore ineligible for inclusion in the main F-Droid repo.
They have their own F-Droid repo:
https://app.futo.org/fdroid/repo/
The repo is also pre-included in clients such as Droid-ify, which I use anyway because I like it better than the official client.
I really like heliboard. It works without network permissions, has autocorrect, and can do emojis
Looks tempting but the repo as active issues going back 2 years without being resolved. I’ll still probably give it a go tho, seems a popular opinion, thanks
I’ve been using it without major caveats since October last year. Even tried the proprietary swiping library you can install (it uses the Gboard one iirc, but OFC it can’t do anything since it’s isolated by the app and not connected to the internet)
Nice that sounds perfect honestly! I’ll have go try it next. Thank you
I cannot see it in the Play Store.
f droid
Heliboard is decent
I use Gboard but have blocked it’s Internet access, which is possible on Graphene OS.
I think I should install grapheneOS regardless, thank you
Florisboard is also amazing. One of a very few that dont actually track what you type. The other one i know of with no tracking is anysoftkeyboard.
Ya I want to know too
tried 'em all and they all suck. it’s possible there are options that work for monolingual people, but for simultaneously using 3-4 languages without annoying switching back and forth, there is no alternative.
since android 15 you can disable network access to any app and that’s how I run gboard, the only google app I have on my mobile devices.
Heliboard.
You can couple FUTO speech.
Well, I second Futo (for the keyboard, not speech). Heliboard is laggy as hell on y redmi.
I use HeliBoard too. You have to load a library to enable swipe typing, but it’s still totally offline.
Using Heliboard now. It’s great. Thanks so much!
I just use Gboard and block network
Another user said they used GrapheneOS to block network, what’s your method?
Same here. But I believe it is possible with netguard as well, maybe other apps as well
I use helioboard and floris board for other languages. Been liking it, very customizable. I changed the spacing on the keyboard to fit my fingers, so i make less mistakes.
I miss inserting gifs from gboard. Does anyone have a solution to that?
thumb-key. It takes some getting used to but its amazing.
dev here, glad you like!
If you want to try something totally different, I can recommend Thumb-key. There’s a bit of a learning curve, but once you get used to it, it can be quite fast to type with.
WTF! That’s SO weird! I have to try it xD thanks
Another good part is that nobody wants to use your phone, since they can’t type with it 😅
My go to is still Hacker’s Keyboard. It’s great with Termux and me as good touch keyboard as I’ve had.
