I’m sick of random capitalisations mid sentence. I’m sick of common words being replaced by less common ones or even downright nonsense. I’m sick of it taking three attempts to successfully get the word I want. I swear it’s been like this for five years or more. Can we have a better version yet, or at least the old one back?
I’m still using Swype & Dragon, and it’s as awesome as it was 12 years ago.
Apparently it’s not working with Android versions >12 anymore, so I’ll ride this phone until it dies on me.
It’s all getting worse, I swear Swype worked near flawlessly fifteen years ago. I’ve used iNsturalist for years to identify plants and animals. lately it doesn’t know what anything is. It thought a bird was a bullfrog yesterday. Search results, GPTs, all nearing unusability.
Yep swype around 2010-12 was the golden age of this stuff. I distinctly remember being on a bus commute being amazed how quickly I could pump out work emails, and documents on way to work on maybe an LG android smartphone with no manual invention required on spelling or grammar. Ancient times. Just typing out this comment on mobile in 2024 I’ve had to recorrect every 4th to 5th word , either I mistyped and it doesnt autocorrect correctly , or its autochanging correct words to wrong ones. I have big fingers but the phone is the higgest I’ve had. Clearly these enshittertech corporations dont make money from making better or more useful products .
Google keyboard was even better that Swype back then. Only when they started trying to make it smarter by scrubbing all our text input did it start getting worse. However they need the pretense to collect all our input so they’re never going back.
Gboard was first introduced in 2016, I’m talking 2010-2012.
Google keyboard predates gboard. App view here says 2013, so not quite that range but close.
Yes, fully agree. They make absolutely no sense at all.
Considering that predicting the next word from context is the one thing LLMs are really good at, I just don’t understand how none of these developments have found their way into predictive keyboards.
I’ve actually switched to ThumbKey and while I don’t think I’m faster with it (yet), it’s at least so much less frustrating and that’s worth a lot to me.
Considering that predicting the next word from context is the one thing LLMs are really good at, I just don’t understand how none of these developments have found their way into predictive keyboards.
The problem is that LLMs require a considerable amount of computing power to run, unlike the simple markov chain predictions that keyboards use. You could use a cloud-based service like ChatGPT or something, but most people wouldn’t want their keyboards to send all their keystrokes to a remote server… and even if they didn’t know or care, the response time wouldn’t be good enough for real-time predictions.
Now smartphone SoC makers like Qualcomm have started adding NPUs (neural processing units) with their latest chips (such as the SD8 Gen 3, featured in the most recent flagship phones), but it’s going to take a while before devices with NPUs become commonplace, and it’ll take a while for developers to start making/updating apps that can make use of it.
But yeah the good news is that it is coming, it’s only a matter of “when” - I suspect it won’t be long before the likes of SwiftKey start to take advantage of this.
Especially as multilingual it is a mess! It didn’t use to be this bad!
It’s worse when you are not multilingual! I am in Ireland and keep getting Spanish words predicted. I am not in Spain or California, why?
Dude… i’ve been thinking about your reply here a lot since you made it, and trying to understand. Why is it worse for you than for multilingual users?
Its not like i can use Spanish suggestions better than you just because i speak more than 1 language.
I dont even speak Spanish but even if i did, i couldn’t use the Spanish suggestions when writing English or any other language
Neither can I.
My experience with iPhone
- It over-emphasizes the first character when guessing your word, so the most common failures are when I have a typo as the first character, it guesses something completely different
- Auto-complete. I have no idea what triggers it but sometimes it just decides to use whatever it has in auto-complete when I’m just trying to keep typing. This is the second most common failure and commonly results in extra words
yeah, my android did better at predictive text than my iphone does. it refuses to recognize even the simplest proper nouns on many occasions.
I sideloaded HeliBoard on Android via F-Droid and the predictive text is coming along nicely the more I type.
Hmmm, wonder why it needs side loaded? Why can they post to the Google store?
Edit: just installed it and f-droid, though. Super easy.
Let me know what you think about it. I also loaded the swipe gesture pack and it is super responsive
Posting on the google store sucks, they make you jump through hoops and will collect data. If the app is already open source, there is no good reason to put it on the google play store.
Also, I don’t really understand the point of the term side loading when Android doesn’t prevent you to from adding other software sources. It feels like it carries connotations when all you are doing is adding a very well established open source software repository.
Gboard is so good at predicting text it is scary sometimes.
Or how about with apple, when it autocorrects a word, and you want to manually click to the middle of the word, or even to the beginning or end, it fuckin highlights the word endlessly. That’s one of the most frustrating for me.
I’ve Al’s it entirely stopped using swype because it’s so dogshit now. I used to love it.
deleted by creator
Fully aware of that function. As I said elsewhere, it just doesn’t come naturally to me to do that. It’s like using the arrows on a keyboard to move the cursor through text. It works, but I just use the mouse and click where I want to edit. If using the mouse didn’t work in certain instances, I’d have the same complaint. I want to click where I want, when I want. Not use a function I don’t naturally use when the computer forces me to. See what I’m saying? Doesn’t change the problem that there’s a workaround. It shouldn’t need a workaround for a super basic, incredibly common function.
Actually using the arrows along with ctrl and shift is much faster than taking your hands off the keyboard and using the mouse. Would recommend
Swype typing still working awesome for me on Gboard.
What’s Gboard?
Edit: ugh, it’s google? That it’s own problem I’d like to avoid
It would solve two of your problems though, that’s a pretty good bargain.
I switched from Android to iPhone after they stopped making phones with QWERTY physics keyboards. I tried my partner’s iPhone and the screen typing was actually excellent. Now with HUGE version iPhones, it’s wayyyy easier for me.
I’m sure on-screen Android keyboards are VASTLY improved since then, but I don’t have any problems day-to-day shitposting all day
My transition from OnePlus 6T -> iPhone 12 Pro Max -> OnePlus 12 was the same, both times.
iPhone had really good type and haptics and predictive entry around that time…but over time I started to find it annoying. More and more often it would insist that the word I correctly entered 2-3 times is actually wrong.
I’m really happy with the keyboard on my new phone. Haptics are better, hit boxes are better, autocorrect is (generally) better, and it’s pretty good about learning new words or fixing between its and it’s and such.
I tried to swipe some word earlier and it decided what really wanted to say was ConocoPhillips. Why the fuck is that even in the dictionary in my phone? When would I ever want to say that?
It was totally to give you content to share today on Lemmy /s
I have wondered for a while if both the predictive and spelling ‘help’ these keyboard provide are getting broken because they’re integrating “what most people do” to your phone.
autocorrect is like downright scary now. you have to double, triple check what you typed is what WAS typed.
Yeah. Kinda like an LLM lmao
I’ve finally had to disabled it. Been a few weeks and while typing is more of an effort on my part, it is also much less frustrating.
The predictive text was far and away the most annoying part.
Disabling autocorrect showcased how bad I am at phone typing. But I have to be very mindful of what is actually corrected and corrected to. Especially in sms where there’s no easy edit
At some point, “lets”, “well”, “ill”, “id”, and “its” (among many others) have stopped being words, apparently.
Tin foil hat: Spy phone/app/browser looking at what you’re reading and adding it to your keyboard hints. That particular company was mentioned in a recently linked article about the company triggering an earthquake from fracking in northern BC, as well as being sued by the state of California.
I’d assume it was something you’d typed once (maybe while searching or a typo). I always delete those words when they come up (for me that’s dragging the word up and a bin appears).
For real. If someone could SCTUALLY (oh look another issue. It fails to work out the word if the first letter is wrong far too often) *ACTUALLY answer this question I’d be halfway happy
Phones learn from what you’re typing. The more you type (typo) something, the more they will recommend it to you. Vicious cycle if it auto corrupts it for you, and you miss it/ignore it thinking the other party will understand you fine. Eventually it learns the ironic typos as actual words and then you’re stuck with them when you type. I kind of wish there’s a way to review / manage the autocomplete dictionaries, but I haven’t tried hard enough to find out yet.
My phone still doesn’t know what fuck means or suggests it to me when I want to write it even though I use it fairly often. I also daily greet my coworkers over threema and it still hasn’t learned what I want to write when my sausage fingers and the too smal keyboard are at a disagreement what should be written.
On my phone if I hold down on the suggested word in the keyboard area, I can delete it from “learned words.” This is only really helpful if it’s a typo that isn’t also a real word.
I don’t think the above poster has ever typed ConocoPhillips (hey it’s on my autocorrect too)
Cookbooks
ConocoPhillips
I have it!
Edit: they’re a gas company?
I don’t inderstand, my phone knows that when I type stormloght, what I really mean is Stormlowght instead. (This happened yesterday)
Auto carrot is amazing.
I think it’s going good to go home and get a new car and ride the bike and get a ride home and take it easy and take care of it and take care and take care and get some sleep and sleep and relax for me and you can go to sleep and sleep well too if you want to come home to help with me to work on the bed if you want it to work with you and you can come over for me to come over for a little bit if I don’t have a chance for -
Inhale
apples and eggs for the night and then I’ll get them in my mouth to you when I come home for you if you don’t get it or you don’t have a lot of money and then you will get a hold on it for the first one and I will get it for you to get the rest for you to do it for them to be done for the next few days and they will get it done before they get there so we can get it and then they can go back and see it and get them done and get the money to get it to you and then you can get the -
Inhale
Bepsi and then go to the store to get the money for you and your family and you will be there for you to go to the house and get the money and you can get a hold up for me to go to your place and get the money for it and get the money for the money and pay it for it to be a little more than a little bit of the way to get you in the back of the house to get it to you to be honest to you and your family and I can go to the store to go out and go to the bank to see if you can go back to work and get a ride home if that’s ok if you want me and I don’t -
Gboard suggestions are very bizarre.
Bepsi
Yeah, I have to give it a word to start with for every paragraph. I was wondering if anyone would get that far!
I don’t know, I’ve used Gboard for so long I don’t notice if it’s good or bad. I swipe and it almost always works first time, if not it’s got the word suggested.
If it gets stuck, I start typing the keys and it usually suggests what I want. Same if I get stuck.
Sometimes I use speech to text, which works about the same and often better. If I could master punctuation with it, I would use it all the time.
When I type on a full size keyboard, it’s shit and takes forever. The speed on mobile is one of the main reasons I try not to use anything else. I can type at about the same rate as I can think of what I want to say. Tapping my fingers, I would have forgotten what I wanted to say before I could finish typing it.
I’m really just typing now for fun and to see how many words I can get into a comment before it becomes dull.
But then again, I never was very good at typing. Maybe that’s why it’s so much faster for me with a virtual keyboard.
I have a major issue with Gboard where it’ll have a word suggested, I’ll see it, type the next letter in the word, then tap the suggestion. BUT it’ll have moved the suggestion from the middle to the side in favor of putting some random word in the middle and I’ll tap the wrong word because of that.
It’s so frustrating for it to move around like that.
It’s because the developers are self absorbed narcissists who think you’re staring at the prediction bar while typing and so if you are still typing after it shows you that word, even one character, that must not be the one you’re trying to type. What if you’re using a keyboard how it’s supposed to be used, as a utility to interact with something else rather than treating the keyboard as the center of the universe, and so looking at what you’re typing as you’re typing it, like a normal person? Guess they didn’t think of that.
Retrain your fingers! Seriously though, muscle memory is a big factor. Get out the habit of typing the next letter, if the word is there just use it. Iirc, this is how they beat speed typing records.
I’d never once considered a phone being faster. I always see typing on my phone as a pain, an I’m no great touch typist by an means (around 80wpm).
How fast do you type on a standard keyboard, for comparison? I’m curious if you like the phone better because you’re not very fast with a regular keyboard, or if I’m just bad with my phone.
At the time when I was using computers and keyboards at work, and even played Typing of the Dead occasionally, I would probably have struggled to get anywhere near 40wpm.
So not fast at all, but also not slow on mobile. I wonder if there’s a test?
Ayo, whatever has been making recommendations for my next few terms in Visual Studio can go straight onto my phone, that shit is accurate 90% of the time it’s sometimes a wee bit concerning
deleted by creator
Oh how I wish the same was true for languages other than English too… autocorrect has always been borderline unusable with my (granted, smaller) language, and this is true for all of the applications of autocorrect, be it android or iOS or whatever.
Yeah I’ve been very happy with Gboard recommendations, I disabled networking for the app since I’m using GrapheneOS and it still does great. Even voice to text is scary good, just have to download the model before disabling networking.
In the case of Google keyboard its crap so as to push people to use the search engine and view ads. I assume its the same for Swiftkey and Bing/CoPilot
Damn that’s egregious
