this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2026
33 points (86.7% liked)

Android

33684 readers
215 users here now

DROID DOES

Welcome to the Android community on Lemmy. Here you can participate in amazing discussions and events relating to all things Android.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules

1. All posts must be relevant to Android devices/operating system.

2. Posts cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

3. No spam, self promotion, or upvote farming. Sources engaging in these behavior will be added to the Blacklist.

4. Non-whitelisted bots will be banned.

5. Engage respectfully: Harassment, flamebaiting, bad faith engagement, or agenda posting will result in your posts being removed. Excessive violations will result in temporary or permanent ban, depending on severity.

6. Memes are not allowed to be posts, but are allowed in the comments.

7. Posts from clickbait sources are heavily discouraged. Please de-clickbait titles if it needs to be submitted.

8. Submission statements of any length composed of your own thoughts inside the post text field are mandatory for any microblog posts, and are optional but recommended for article/image/video posts.

Community Resources:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Rooki@lemmy.world
L3s@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
33
Finally deleted GBoard (piefed.social)
submitted 11 hours ago by artyom@piefed.social to c/android@lemmy.world
30 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Over the years I've tested out pretty much all the Android keyboards, but swipe typing always kept me on GBoard, even though GBoard did not support voice typing for anything except Google, so I had to switch keyboards for that.

Recently I learned that HeliBoard has support for gesture typing with the Google library. But I couldn't find any instructions on where to get the necessary files or how to do it. Well, someone posted a link to the file elsewhere so I'll share it here. And it works! Extremely well. I can also pin a button for voice typing and then select Transcribro for that (which uses OpenAI Whisper locally and works super well.

Another gripe I had with GBoard was the cursor moves way too fast when swiping on the space bar. Not so with Heliboard. You can also swipe backwards from the backspace key and it will highlight text and then delete it when you let go.

top 30 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] sbeak@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 hour ago

OH I did not know you could swiped the backspace key on Heliboard. That is so useful! Thanks internet person!

Yeah, Heliboard is awesome. I fell in love with it because it is so ridiculously customisable, like you can change the position of all the symbol keys, the padding, the icons, everything! I also liked that there was an option to have it fit with my Material You theme (but it's disabled by default, which I think is good for people who don't like it)

I also like that you can set the option so that swiping up-down or left-right on the spacebar can be set to anything. For me, I just have it move the typing cursor around, but you can configure it to do other stuff too!

[–] Murse@slrpnk.net 5 points 5 hours ago

Either it's the nostalgia goggles, or another example of enshittification... but I remember when gesture typing was exclusive (actually was it exclusive? idr) to FlexT9 and it was like magic - your gestures could be sloppy as fuck and it was still shockingly accurate. Someone must have bought them out or something, cuz FlexT9 kinda just disappeared and gesture typing started to become a standard feature. But no longer a reliable feature... as evident by the number of times I had to manually correct the autocorrects in this post...

[–] AndrewZabar@lemmy.world 7 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

I really like Heliboard but Jesus does it suck at autocorrect and detecting what key I meant to hit. Gboard is a thousand times more accurate in these respects and so I default to Heliboard but I’ll occasionally switch to gboard if I have a lot to type and Heli is just wasting my time.

[–] Oberon@lemmy.zip 3 points 7 hours ago

Glad it's not just me with the autocorrect. I feel like I am fighting it sometimes but I'm too stubborn to go back to GBoard

[–] artyom@piefed.social 1 points 8 hours ago

That's why I mentioned the Google swipe library

[–] uuj8za@piefed.social 4 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Does Helioboard support multi-language typing? I write in Spanish and English all the time. I tried FUTO's keyboard but pretty much immediately had to uninstall it because constantly having to switch the language on the keyboard super sucked.

[–] artyom@piefed.social 3 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Sure does

[–] uuj8za@piefed.social 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Unfortunately, it's got some issues... It kinda works, but after typing Spanish with the English keyboard, I think I broke the English keyboard...

XJYxVQpP0ty9ZLK.png

It's not as bad as FUTO, but the Spanish spellcheck on the English keyboard could be improved... 😢

I'm stuck on Gboard... :(

[–] sbeak@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 hour ago

I believe Heliboard has the option for installing multiple keyboard languages, and you can switch between them by holding down the spacebar. No idea how well the spellcheck works in Spanish though. For me, using the Portuguese keyboard seems to work well, and spellcheck looks okay. Note that I have only had a few lessons in Portuguese and haven't touched it since so I only know counting to ten and a couple other things, so I haven't used it for a long period to fully judge how well it works.

Olá, um dóis três quatro cinco seis sete oito nove dez

[–] AbsolutelyClawless@piefed.social 13 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

The instructions are on their Github wiki, the link to which can be found in the About section of HeliBoard Settings, for anyone who's curious. 

[–] poopy@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

I just started using heliboard the other day and I really want to like it. But the swiping seems way less accurate. I also switch between swiping and using two thumbs to tap. When tapping, it seems like autocorrect rarely works well compared to gboard.

[–] Eeyore_Syndrome@sh.itjust.works 6 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

I use Futo Voice Input for voice input myself.

But yes, Helioboard is amaze.

I used the whatever third party blob for Helioboard's swipe input is from..... Forgot where I got the instructions for that...but it was easy peasy.

[–] artyom@piefed.social 0 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

They're both pretty much the same thing except Transcribro is actually open source.

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 3 points 8 hours ago

Transcribro is amazingly accurate, better than anything else I've tried.

[–] Ganbat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

I've always had trouble with Heliboard. I don't know why, but I just can't seem to type on it.

Edit: This is me typknfnkn hslkbkadd in the same waybibtypebkn gboard.

[–] Mynameisallen@lemmy.zip 1 points 9 hours ago

I struggle with it too tbh

[–] plateee@piefed.social 1 points 8 hours ago

I wouldn't mind switching, but I heavily rely on the gif search capability.

[–] SteveCC@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago (3 children)

I see that FUTO has a keyboard too. Is it necessary to install both FUTO keyboard and voice input? Do people like the FUTO keyboard as a google alternative?

[–] gedaliyah@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I love FUTO keyboard. I think you can set up other voice inputs, but I'm not sure. I do know that you can use the voice input with other keyboards. It's honestly the best voice input I've ever used. It works better than Google or Microsoft. It's faster than other implementations of the same library.

A lot of people have said that the gesture typing is bad, but I've never had trouble with it personally.

Heliboard is also a great choice - I used it for a while before switching to FUTO. If you are an open source enthusiast, it is the best option by far IMO. FUTO has the source available for audit and community contributions, and is privacy respecting, but it is debated whether the license is truly FOSS.

[–] AndrewZabar@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Is that actually your name? As in, גדליה? Juuuuust curious.

[–] gedaliyah@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago

My middle name, yeah.

[–] Broiled_Tofu@lemmy.zip 1 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Futo is really good! The voice input is amazing! And you can actually download just the voice input and use it inside Heliboard if you want

[–] SteveCC@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago

Thanks. Uninstalled FUTO keyboard. Just using FUTO voice with HeliBoard

[–] xep@discuss.online 0 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Does Helioboard support Japanese input?

[–] artyom@piefed.social 1 points 9 hours ago

Doesn't look like it, sorry