I’ve been using SwiftKey for waaaaaaay too long. I shoulda switched when Microsoft bought them out.
But old habits die hard. And I love the skin I use.
Help they know everything I’ve typed on a phone. That can’t be good for anyone.
Edit: Holy fuck everyone, thanks for all of the responses!
I went with Heliboard, and typing this, it looks like I have to change a couple more settings to get it like I had Swiftkey, but I already like it more.
The fact you can basically make your own skin by changing all of the colors of the keyboard is amazing.
Fuck microsoft’s ai keyboard.
Heliboard for lyfe!
Edit edit: trying to delete my data from Swiftkey was INSANELY hard. I couldn’t do it from my phone, so I had to login with a computer. They think they are slick… Fuckers…
I’m also a Swiftkey holdover, trying Heliboard now…
Is there a keyboard that can do haptic feedback while typing and enable multiple languages at the same time? These two features are really missing for me.
Heliboard can do multilingual typing, and I believe there is some kind of haptic feedback… I don’t use that function, but it was mentioned in the latest release notes
Thanks! I went back and eventually found the settings for them. You can even configure the length of the haptic feedback which is great.
How does it do multilingual typing? You have to change the input method, right?
Not necessarily: you can choose to have several languages separated as different input methods (you can switch between them very quickly by sliding vertically from the space bar) OR you can go to “Settings / Languages” and select one of your active languages and inside its submenu add languages for multilingual typing. This way when you select that original language as input method it will use and recognise all the languages you added at once. I must say this can be tricky with glide typing, but still works pretty well.
Heliboard seems decent so far.
+1 vor HeliBoard. I was in the same position and switched about half a year ago. The only thing I missing so far is a dedicated voice input button.
It has that now
I use Gboard cause it’s the only keyboard that has the preferences that I want. I’m on GrapheneOS, so I just disable the network connection for Gboard.
What preferences are you referring to?
Autocorrect, not removing my corrections after I hit the backspace key, being able to disable the suggestion boxes, being able to customize it to my liking, and a couple other things that I’m currently forgetting about.
Ima be honest, I just use Google Keyboard but disable the its networking for the app.
thumbkey. blazingly fast and secure.
I like florisboard, it’s fairly customizable.
Spent a bit of time customising it when I got it, and it’s saved me so much frustration over the past year. Copy pasting, tabbing, having an undo via keyboard, moving character with an arrow. I enjoy typing with a touchscreen now. Would recommend it to anyone wholeheartedly.
Here’s one I made, called Thumb-Key. No internet permissions, made to be private.
I appreciate that it’s made for my thumbs as opposed to other, less keyboard optimal digits.
I use this after messagease suddenly decided to charge a subscription fee.
It’s pretty darn close in functionality. Highly recommend taking the time to learn it.
Thx! Ya the main reason I made it, was because messagease development died, and all my emails to the messagease team (their only contact email) went unanswered for like 2+ years. So it seemed like a good opportunity to do a from-scratch open source rewrite.
I actually forked your code so I could customize the keyboard a little bit. I was impressed that I didn’t have any problems building the thing right away. Doesn’t always happen for me with open source projects.
One thing that was driving me nuts was how sensitive the swipe gestures on the spacebar are. I guess my thumbs always do a slight swipe when I’m pressing space and it was moving the cursor position on me. I wiped out all of that code. If you’re taking suggestions, a way to disable swipe gestures on the spacebar would be a cool add. I’ll see if I can get together a PR for it as well and be a part of the solution.
Sure, I’d accept a PR for adding a setting to disable all spacebar swipes.
Hey! I tried your keyboard out when I was setting up my new phone - very cool and innovative idea!
Thx!
Darn it, I popped into this thread to suggest Thumb-Key, and was beaten to it by the maker of the keyboard!
Thank you for making my phone usage much faster and enjoyable (written using Thumb-Key of course!) :)
Thank you for making this!
I really need to try making something for Android, looks like fun
I’ve wandered through a bunch of them. Used to use Florisboard. Unexpected Keyboard is pretty good too. The Hacker’s Keyboard for some stuff. Mostly these days Heliboard for general typing.
I have been using Hacker’s Keyboard since … forever?
Been using Florisboard for a while. It is the most like gboard, although the swipe typing is not as good. All in all though, I’d still recommend.
Ay, also am using that one
If you’d like to have a more ergonomical keyboard: thumb-key is way worth the learning curve!
+1 for the keyboard. I thought it was a meme app at first but it turned out to be way better than I ever expected. Written from Thumb-key BTW.
Thx! (I’m the main dev)
Unexpected Keyboard on f-droid.
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Florisboard on f-droid is pretty ok.
I love the Samsung keyboard. It has a delete key
Samsung and Privacy don’t mix. Not worth it IMO to use a closed source keyboard if you care about privacy.
While I do agree and have stopped using the Samsung keyboard, it does have many unique features that I still miss almost daily.
A few that come to mind:
- a special text editing mode (select all to the left, right; turn select mode on and then move around with arrowkeys while selecting, …)
- visual resizing of the keyboard
- “2D” cursor control (move cursor diagonally)
- swipe spacebar left/right to change input method (while having spacebar cursor control enabled!)
You are posting in a privacy community confessing that you were long hooked on some keyboard for their shiny look and what not :-) What do you really want from a keyboard app besides privacy ?
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Funky characters ? https://f-droid.org/en/packages/mf.asciitext.lite/
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As simple as possible ? https://f-droid.org/en/packages/rkr.simplekeyboard.inputmethod/
Probably there is more privacy friendly ones in this long list : https://search.f-droid.org/?q=keyboard&lang=en
Have fun!
Swyping, the core functionality? And maybe one-finger mode?
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