Ask Lemmy

Heliboard, FOSS keyboard app. Very good.

HeliBoard

https://keyboard.futo.org/

FUTO. It's as basic and barebones as Gboard, while also having more optional features and not owned by Google.

What does APP stand for?

I'm soooo fucking glad for this question. I've been using thumbkey for like a year, after I got fed up using a normal keyboard. It's sooo convenient I feel like I make a lot less typos using it and sometimes I can even type without lookin at my screen

Going to try thumb key thanks to this thread and see how it goes. Seems like a steep learning curve but I dig the concept of it. Wrote this (slowly) in it.

On Android? Anysoft keyboard.

It's the best of the software keyboards available in F-Droid for general use in my opinion. It's FOSS, fairly-configuable (though I'd like to have a "macro board" where I could, in-app, assign arbitrary characters or text snippets to keyboards). It supports "splitting" the keyboard, which is nice on a tablet.

But it has some pretty substantial issues.

There's some bug it has, maybe a race condition, maybe multiple. On a slower, MediaTek-based Android device, I've seen it "miss" letters. Recently, on a faster one, I've seen it insert duplicate text when editing the middle of a word in various programs, like Firefox; I had to turn off the suggestions functionality to avoid that.

While it does have arrow keys, it doesn't support "drag left/right on the spacebar to move the cursor left/right", which is behavior that I think is very useful.

In general, with F-Droid software keyboards, I've typically found a lack of ability to input things like diacritics, often limited ability to emulate modifier keys for terminal use.

In general, I haven't really been happy with the Android text input situation. On desktop, I can use emacs, or at least use various plugins to edit the contents of a Firefox text field in emacs. On Android, I'd really like to usually go into a fullscreen editing mode with an external editor when editing text, especially given the small screen on many Android devices

I don't want to be editing text in a little text field in Firefox or whatever other app. Android doesn't really have "external editor" support, where the keyboard and editor are separate apps; it has just the software keyboard, which limits options. Maybe it's possible to implement that at the software keyboard level, have a "use external editor" option; I don't know.

On my Pixil 9?

HeliBoard.

I did DL the closed source swipe library (never know when I might need swipe type capability.)

Supplemented with FUTO Voice Input.

The clipboard/paste functionality alone is chef's kiss.

Thumb-key by Lemmy's own dessalines. I even contributed a layout early on, and it's still there.

Is it even legal to use lemmy with any other keyboard than thumb-key?

8vim is wonderful. I love to use it in combination with droidvim and/or vim on my terminal emulator

SwiftKey, as it supports 4 simultaneous languages pretty well, including diacritics and predictions. It's owned by Microsoft so I wouldn't recommend it unless you have this specific requirement.

FlorisBoard

The stock AOSP keyboard.

Typewise.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.icoaching.typewise

Once you get used to it, it is very good. Nice large buttons, fast typing, strong privacy (e.g. EU based, on-device-only learning for next word suggestions), customizable, and you can also get the pro version forever with a single purchase instead of using the subscription model.

I just let ai do whatever it wants

Unfortunately Microsoft SwiftKey since its the only one that autocorrects in a correct way when I type and hit the wrong keys.

OpenBoard, sometimes Fossify keyboard, once in a while keepass2android keyboard

Fleksy, I always hunt and peck so it works well for me

I think I might have found a replacement for Gboard just now. First I found Fossify had a keyboard, but no Japanese input. Then I found one I'm gonna have to get used to that I'm currently trying out:

スミレ日本語キーボード ( Sumire Japanese keyboard )

I need to comb through settings to see if this is actually the keyboard for me, but I am liking it sk far. Really have to check if for their English QWERTY board there is a setting to bring the period to the letter section or if it is trapped with the other punctuation and make it so it automatically puts a space after doing one of their suggested words in the top bar thing.

The Japanese board is 9-key and also has a QWERTY romaji board, so I'm satisfiedright now. I personally don'tcare about the romaji board since I can read hiragana and katakana and I prefer 9-key because it's what I am used to on Gboard, but it's coolfor those that need it for any reason.

I also just learned before posting my comment that the keyboard defaults to that Japanese 9-key everytime you bring up the keyboard. Not a big deal, just another thing to learn and get used to.

Edit: switching to HeliBoard for English and switching as need be for Japanese. Just making the switch to get stuff done in a more efficient and timely manner.

I tried FUTO keyboard out for so long and spent ages contributing swipe data. But its without a doubt the worst keyboard all ive ever used. Kills battery and has bad autocorrect.

I'm using heliboard now and it has no swipe but at least auto correct works well and its good on battery.

gboard. Swipe typing is great. I'd love an open source alternative that doesn't involve manually copying stuff around.

Irregular expressions.

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ʞuᴉl pᴉoɹpɟ

Simple keyboard, no autocorrect though :S

Heliboard without the google swipe library. I also use Futo Voice when I have a lot to type.