This thread is ONLY to talk about Keyboards, Notes, Maps and Music Players. I add video Music Players because probably some people want to know about good FOSS alternatives.
Little context
spoiler
Why not build a megathread with the best and most reliable FOSS apps too help someone who want to join on the bright side of open source?
We (because this is not from me, this is from us) need to share thoughts, ideas and all things you want to say. Dont be shy. Upvote the comments you like and agree; disagree and tell why you disagree. This is will be different from others threads because this need a proper user opinion, and your opinions will be VERY important to build this. In short, your opinions and thoughts will be the fundamental source to build this.
I will read ALL comments to build this. Even if this has a million comments, I’m going to waste time reading it. Whatever it takes.
Your opinions about it are CRUCIAL and FUNDAMENTAL, because your opinions is the main-base to build the megathread.
Please, consider share your ideas and thoughts about apps on previous threads. Your opinions are really important to build final megathread. You can upvote or downvote posts so that comments gain strength and agreement between the community.
I yearn for the day a FOSS keyboard for Android will have functional multilingual autocorrect. Most of the typing I do on my phone is in Frenglish and every FOSS keyboard I’ve tried has made it impossible to have autocorrect turned on. They always default to autocorrecting in either only English or only French which is just very frustrating.
Compare that to SwiftKey, which not only has no issues with mixed languages, also learns my texting patterns, such as typing j’fais rather than je fais. I just don’t give it any permissions, including network access. It’s one of the only proprietary things on my phone but I couldn’t use my phone without it.
I hate how good SwiftKey’s autocorrect is. I’m definitely on the hunt for a good alternative in this thread.
I’ve been using the OpenBoard fork since it got recommended in this thread and it’s been good enough for me to disable SwiftKey (not delete yet though, I’m not ready to fully commit to deleting that accrued personal dictionary). I recommend checking it out!
Thank you!! I’m trying it out now and it’s definitely very promising. I love the swipe on backspace to select and delete. I do wish it had long press on backspace to delete a single word. That plus lowering the long press time makes it so easy to make corrections.
AnySoftKeyboard lets you merge dictionaries when you long press the Enter button. I’ve been using it for multilingual autocorrect for a few years now.
I’ve tried AnySoftKeyboard and that was not my experience. It worked fine if I only wrote out sentences that were fully in one language or the other, but as soon as I tried to switch mid-sentence it became completely borked.
I’ve been using the OpenBoard fork that was recommended in this thread for the past few days, and it’s been lovely.
yeah, I’m trying the fork out of curiosity, but it’s missing some little features ASK has and some of the other features are in different places, so I’m not sure how long it’s gonna last.
Have you tried this active fork of OpenBoard? The dev added support for multilingual typing months ago. This has Material You theme as well as glide typing (needs to be turned on manually).
I was honestly hoping for a reply like this when I commented. I’ll give it a try, thanks! 😊 I’d love to ditch SwiftKey.
Edit: So far, it’s the by far best FOSS option I’ve tried. There’s even a couple of things it does much better than SwiftKey IMO (although I do wish there were an option to make the keyboard a bit smaller, it feels massive!) I’ll stick with it for 2-3 weeks to try and train its auto-correct to my liking.
Do open an issue on GitHub for whatever you feel needs work. This project is being actively worked upon, I’ve seen stuff get implemented within a day even!
After looking around the settings a bit more, I noticed the “keyboard height scale” and “bottom padding scale” options, I set both of these to 80% and it’s perfect!
Thanks again the the great suggestion 😊
I’ve just installed it and it appears that you still have to manually switch between languages, otherwise it won’t correct your attempts to write in another language.edit: looks like you need to press on your preferred dictionary and add multilingual typing for it to work. it’s quite decent, especially when you set autocorrect to “very aggressive”, otherwise it will have difficulties recognising when you’re trying to type in the secondary language.
Really happy with this fork, using it for several months now. Also occasionally Unexpected Keyboard for termux / ssh / code …
Very impressed with the number of issues that have been opened in just the last few months. It’s clear there is a lot of interests in a FOSS keyboard. There are requests for gifs in there as well. Also the multiple pull requests from different contributors are promising.
Unfortunately I, like many other, probably do like 30℅ of my communication via gifs so it’s realm hard to go without regardless of how much I want to use a FOSS app.
Wow thanks, exactly what I’ve been looking for!
Edit: was using swype which was last updated in 2018 and is broken with android 14. Been looking for a replacement for ages. This open board fork is the best replacement I’ve tried so far. The word prediction works differently but I’ll get used to it.
I’m extremely picky about Notes apps. I’ve tested so many Open source as well as closed source apps. I’ll be interested in what others are using, but the features I want are:
- Cross platform (Android, Linux, and MacOS)
- Universal format - markdown is a bonus
- Good task handling with checklist support
So what I’ve settled with is Obsidian (not open source) due to its simplicity of reading and writing to a folder hierarchy of plain text files. But since it sucks at task and checklists, I’ve been using Quillpad. It only syncs with Nextcloud at the moment, but there is promise of plain text file and bring-your-own-sync-solution on the roadmap.
Notesnook is a nice app, but since it’s all E2EE, there is no plain text without exporting your notes manually. Shame too because it handles tasks and checklists very nicely.
Honorable mention: Acreom it’s not open source yet, but that is on the roadmap. It is local first and plain text files on desktop OSes…but not on Android, meaning of you want to sync between your desktop and mobile you have to use their cloud. And I don’t want to do that.
Joplin gets mentioned constantly. But it adds weird metadata to every text file and changes the titles of the files to some garbled hexadecimal string, which makes it impossible to know what you’re looking at at the file level. And the task management/checklists is awful. Android app is bad too. I’m sure I’ll get hate for hating on the FOSS golden child, but that’s ok. This is simply my opinion. Like I said I’m very picky.
I haven’t used it, but I’ve heard logseq is pretty much FOSS obsidian.
It is very close. But it has more of a day view/outline focused approach which clashes with the way my brain wants to work. And seemingly, you can’t change that in the settings or with plugins.
@[email protected] it is really hard to find the perfect Notes app. I’ve tried a bunch and settled on Quillpad, synced with Nextcloud.
I do like Quillpad quite a bit. It’s the best Google Keep replacement out there at the moment. I would rather it not be tied to Nextcloud, and supposedly that is eventually coming. But for now I’m using it daily alongside Obsidian.
thoughts on markor? also, what do you mean acreom plans open source? what license?
I keep trying Markor. UI is rough though. And not a fan of the checklist and task management within the app. I do like that it’s just simple text files for sure. But not a very elegant solution.
Not sure what license Acreom is going to open source if under. But it’s on their Roadmap
Keyboard: FlorisBoard
Music Player: InnerTune
Is there a way to get autocorrect on Florisboard?
Waiting. They’re programming the thing.
oh? I can wait, that’s not an issue. I didn’t find any forum threads that indicated that was in the works.
In the roadmap at the end of 0.4 https://github.com/florisboard/florisboard/blob/master/ROADMAP.md
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Joplin
I sync it with onedrive basically for free between my phone, laptop and computer. It’s wysiwyg editor means it was basically a drop in replacement for EverNote for me, but open source and without the costs.
OINotepad lost the ability to export notes to a file.
What is another notes app that is single press to start a new note, after app opening. Has no-nag auto-save if app is closed halfway through writing a note. Can auto title the note with the first line of the note. Can export all notes to a clear-readable file. Has search within a single note. And can sort by most recently modified.
Prefer on fdroid, but open to any FLOSS solution(on obtanium etc.)
OINotepad covered all this. Standard notes comes close but I can’t search within an individual note.
Please help. (c:
It has a premium tier with some features locked behind that, so try the freebie first to see if it’s what you want. But I think if covers all those bases. It’s other selling point is encryption, security, and privacy. So by default it’ll prompt for biometrics or password to open the app. You can turn off a bunch of that if it ends up being too much friction for the quick note taking you’re insinuating.
UPDATE: So I tried a whole bunch more note apps, and settled on
It covers all the functionality I need, and is powerful with plenty of features if required.
Thanks for the other suggestion too.
Hey! Thanks for the suggestion. That one is not in the 15 I have tried, I’ll check it out.
- Music player: “dialog music player” for filemanagers, Vanilla music if you want auto-play, anrimians player is nice too (github)
- maps: nothing beats OSMAnd
- Notes: personally markor, but if you want cross platform sync Standard Notes may be nice
- Keyboard: Florisboard forever, so stable and customizable. I cant like without the internal clipboard and quick deletion, and the editing buttons
I’m using “Unexpected Keyboard” right now. I like that it’s different in that I dont have to long press a key in order to input punctuation. It’s a swipe from the center of a key to a corner and I think it’s that little bit faster. :)
Also doesn’t have auto-correct like other FOSS keyboards.
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Auxio is excellent and use Material design.
For notes I’m using Joplin with sync with desktop client through a nextcloud instance. Really a very nice app if you want sync with multiple devices anc user friendly interface.
For maps OsmAnd, I even pay a subscription to support the project (and have hourly updated maps which is pretty cool when I fix wood paths in openstreetmap).
I use Simple Keyboard and sometime Fboard.
And to play music I use RiMusic and also used Retro Music in past.
And NotiNotes for notes. A notes app which lives in notification.
why retro and not metro?
Didn’t know about it.
yeah get it instead lol
Keyboard: AnySoftKeyboard and Unexpected Keyboard
Notes: JoplinHacker’s Keyboard is the only keyboard app I’ll accept on Android.
Notes:
I don’t like that most notes apps don’t let you access to your files, relying instead in cloud synching. One of the few that gives you full control is https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.gsantner.markor/
It let you chose a folder where to save your notes and can manage many types of files (markdown, txt, todo, csv, etc)
I like saving my notes on my SD card, I created different folders to work as notebooks, so for example, I have a folder named “comments” where I edit my comments before posting, one for lists, one for lyrics of songs I like and I’m thinking about making one for cooking recipes.
Music:
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.poupa.vinylmusicplayer/
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/player.phonograph.plusand https://f-droid.org/en/packages/ch.blinkenlights.android.vanilla
Are the best for offline experience. I really like vinyl’s and phonograph’s plus UI, simple, yet powerful. Both supports lyrics, metadata editing and at least vinyl can connect to the internet to grab artist picture and bio which can be displayed offline, I’m not sure if phonograph can since it’s main focus is privacy and to work fully offline.
The issue i have with both is that they don’t work properly on my Samsung tab, I think is the awful Samsung bloatware that makes them stop, and not make full use of all their features.
Vanilla UI isn’t the best looking but it has many features when combined with the extensions. The best Foss metadata fetcher and editor. The problem the app have is that it isn’t update frequently, and at the moment it has a problem with the notifications. There’s already a PR opened in github, so hopefully this get fixed soon.
Keyboard
I’m currently using 2 keyboard apps https://github.com/Helium314/openboard as my main and https://f-droid.org/en/packages/rkr.simplekeyboard.inputmethod When I’m tire of the autocorrector changing what I write. I know I can disable it on openboard, but most of the times I actually use it and simple board is just more fluid.
