So, up front, I’ll admit I’m one of those guys that gets hung up on tiny, largely irrelevant quirks in apps. Yeah, I’m great fun at parties.
So, what’s your favourite keyboard app? I keep coming back to SwiftKey. I feel like it’s the best typing experience for me, with fairly accurate prediction and correction — although it’s far from perfect, of course. I’ve seen plenty of people complain about it, and apart from Microsoft adding Bing to it, it’s not received much in the way of innovation or useful updates since they bought it.
I particularly like that a long press on the backspace key will delete one whole word at a time, speeding up the longer you hold it down. I simply haven’t found the backspace methods on Gboard or the Samsung keyboard (which used to be Swype I guess?) to be as predictable or reliable. Gboard’s swipe back doesn’t feel predictable in what it will do, and Samsung’s backspace is more like iOS.
I also find SwiftKey to be the best at remembering sequences of words; if I start typing my address, it’ll generally remember each successive word and offer it as the main prediction on the top row. Samsung and Gboard both do that to some extent, but I just haven’t found them to be as reliably predictable in the results.
On the other hand, I hate that SwiftKey doesn’t can’t add an image to its clipboard. Copying and pasting images is a breeze with both Gboard and Samsung’s keyboard, but with SwiftKey I pretty much have to download/screengrab and upload any image I want to insert in a chat or post.
So, that’s it. Rant over! What’s your favourite keyboard app, and does anything irritate you about it?
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I just wanted to have a keyboard thats not cluttered with tons of superfluous features so I use simple keyboard configured in a way that it only types and nothing else. I even turned off spellcheck and autocomplete, though that is mostly due to me having bad experiences some years back.
Since the 99% of the available keyboards doesn’t have the Ctrl key for some weird reasons, my options are pretty limited.
For a long time I used BlackBerry Keyboard, but after an update the prediction got abysmally bad.
Now I use Unexpected Keyboard with some modified layout. Doesn’t have any dictionary or prediction, but has all the keys I need.
I’m similarly picky and have been unable to leave SwiftKey.
But good news, the beta version recently added image support to the clipboard.
Same. Typing in 3 languages without having to specify which one, is fantastic with SwiftKey. And it supports the rather obscure Colemak keyboard layout!
I’ve heard that SwiftKey tracks keystrokes, so I’m in the same boat as you. SwiftKey is incredible, but I’d rather lean more into privacy focused alternatives.
I use SwiftKey but block internet access to it.
Does that interfere with any functionality?
I’m pretty sure all the big ones do
Unfortunately as a multi lingual user which includes using a more “exotic” language. There is not much choice asides from either SwiftKey or Gboard (I use SwiftKey)
SwiftKey… Been using it for years now.
I tried SwiftKey for about a week or so a month ago but I’m too used to GBoard to make the switch.
What I like about GB that SK doesn’t have or is too different:
- speech to text integrated into the keyboard. The Bing app is probably the best at this, especially for my non-native English accent, too bad SK doesn’t have its own implementation
- I can set up the keys to show their long press symbols
- the colon character is at an awkward place for my finger to reach
- GB’s swipe function can figure out much more easily what language I wanted to type in
- SK shows every possible accented version of the character that I long pressed on, and the one that I wanted was usually at an awkward place to reach. GB on the other hand sorts those of my native language right next to the original character, and only offers a few that I never use.
SwiftKey does your first two bullets and has full on Bing chatgpt built into the keyboard including getting it to compose messages for you and gives you options to rewrite your messages in different tones like professional, casual, funny, etc.
I feel like most of your issues with swiftkey could be fixed by playing around around with themes/settings a bit to find what fits your needs.
It seems like you were right, it was the theme that I chose that didn’t support showing the long press symbols, even though I enabled them in the settings.
Regarding the voice to text, for me it just opens Google’s voice input, it doesn’t seem like it has its own built in VTT.
Grammarly bc it makes really good suggestions bc i word oorly.
I’ve tried many, but I always come back to SwiftKey. It was one of the things I missed the most when I tried iOS for some time (SwiftKey on iOS sucks).
Hacker’s Keyboard. It’s the only one other than Gboard I ever use, as it was the only one I had found with a full desktop keyboard. I do terminal and remote desktop shit a lot, so I sometimes need the keys that aren’t typically available on a phone keyboard.
Minuum Keyboard master race!
Glad to hear Minuum is still up and running. I couldn’t get super comfortable with it, but I love the concept… and I still remember that first, awful announcement video with the poorly mixed vocals that made it sound like the founder’s name was Will Wompwomp.
I still think it’s the future of keyboards. I will die on the hill that QWERTY makes zero logical sense for touchscreen keyboards and that not utilising machine learning for fuzzy typing is a waste of processor.
I’m gonna say messagease is totally better.
Ooh, just seen one of the developers of Lemmy made a successor for MessageEase https://www.f-droid.org/packages/com.dessalines.thumbkey/
I never got into it 😞
I remember using and loving minuum when it came out especially because I had a smaller phone at the time. But it hasn’t updated in quite a while.
Are there any other keyboard apps out there that have the same layout options?
Sadly no other keyboard with the same layout yet. I’m still hoping for a patched version, maybe Revanced or for someone just to recreate it as an open source release.
I’m the same way regarding quirks. I’ve been using Gboard and for a while bounced between that and Samsung Keyboard. Gboard has the best overall usability for me but a couple things I’m not a fan of: Gboard deleting clipboard history (only from Gboard as it’s still available elsewhere), and including \ as a long press symbol rather than /,where you have to tsp the symbols key and then tap /.
Samsung Keyboard has a few quirks as well, but the biggest was predictive text isn’t as good as Gboard. But I like the customization of it. But I can’t see the symbols on the keys as well as I can on Gboard.
I was a fan of Chroma Keyboard years ago because I liked that it would change color based on the app.
fyi, long-pressing the period key on Gboard gives you some more symbols to choose from, including /.
also includes some symbols that are already behind other keys which is kinda weird.
Yeah, I know, but it just seemed weird to include \ when / seems to be more widely used? Or maybe it’s just me lol.
I used to love Swiftkey before it sold out to Microsoft. I use Gboard with network permissions off nowadays.
Aside from the useless features overkill, I still think SwiftKey is the best Android keyboard. I ignore 90% of the stuff they implement. Quite frankly I am almost unable to type quick without it.
I still use Gboard the most. My wife uses Samsung keyboard and prefers it over Gboard.
I don’t have s Samsung phone so I can’t test that.
Google keyboard by a mile but before that Samsung keyboard which I still love, anyway I have zero interest in trying other keyboards
