I use Gboard.
The main things I like about it are:
- Very customizable (I like having number row always visible, and having long press for symbols on each letter).
- Has gif support built in.
My biggest pain point is:
- It auto corrects words that are spelled correctly to other words. I type “our” and it changes to “out”, I recently typed “purpose” and it changed it to “purple”. Autocorrect is awesome and necessary, but I hate that it corrects words to other words and not just typos. I wish I could find a keyboard that has the things I like without this annoyance.
Am I looking for a unicorn? Let me know! 😄
Multiling-o keyboard might fit the bill.
Cool I’ll take a look. Thanks!
Heliboard, very customisable and doesn’t send all my typing to a MAGMA company’s servers.
Too bad it doesn’t support pasting image urls as images.
Nice, this is the first FOSS board I see that can actually replace my SwiftKey layout. Thanks for the suggestion
I’m using Heliboard a few months ago, I prefer privacy over personalization
While I normally use whatever the default keyboard app is, I do sometimes use Unexpected Keyboard. It doesn’t have auto-correct but it has more keys available than even normal keyboards do. It may take some getting used to though as, for example, to use the “alts” for each key, you have to swipe in that direction. So for example if you wanted to press “Esc” with the default settings, you’d press q and swipe diagonally down and to the right.
For customization, I don’t know if you can add images or gifs but there is some visual options and you have pretty much full control over the layout of the keyboard and what keys it has.
What makes it unexpected?
I know you’re probably just joking but I’m not actually sure why it’s called that. The only thing it does that other keyboards don’t (outside of having more keys than anyone would probably need) is that, I’m pretty sure it’s the smallest keyboard app for android. It’s only 1 MB while the second smallest keyboard I know is the LG Keyboard and that uses a little over 4 MB.
SwiftKey for swipe texting
My keyboard autocorrected this into thus once
I’m using the default samsung one, don’t know the name
SwiftKey. Yes, I hate it being from Microsoft. But has most of the pros already mentioned in this thread and a some important features (for me) that I haven’t found with other keyboard:
I text a lot in Spanish, Portuguese and English; sometimes in French. I can use any of those languages with any preferred layout (qwerty, azerty) or as I do, Spanish layout as a base but from there, I get all characters needed to write properly such as ñ, ç, æ, ê.
Prediction is outstanding, I can start a phrase in one language and continue with other and still get very accurate suggestions. It has been my default keyboard long before Microsoft acquired the company and, for now, big corporate enshittification has been slow. En conclusión y para sumarizar: j’aime bien le SwiftKey clavier, ele tem funções que nenhum outro tem.
are there any good ones for dyslexics? I hate SwiftKey but have yet to find anything that helps with spelling. I know I can use voice to text but sometimes you don’t want speak to your phone in a crowded place.
Heliboard!!
(also on F-Droi & Izzy)Its amazing & completely open sauce.
Extremely configurable too, which I like (and with built in help that guides to eg where to find other libraries).
And if it helps someone - it’s the closest experience to gboard, I only use this keyboard on my devices now. Works with multiple languages at the same time too.Tho for gesture typing I did load Googles library (still offline).
This seems to be the winner across all the comments so far. How does it do with the correcting words to other words thing I mentioned?
Yeah, I don’t understand what you meant by that - if I understood correctly it’s the matter of sometimes autocorrect working as intended and sometimes not? Afaik that is just how it works.
Or if you meant correcting grammar (or sentence prediction?) vs correcting just the spelling … I’m not familiar of any keyboards have that distinction.
(Never had this issue, including on Heli)I have never used autocorrect, not even in T9 days.
I always use gesture typing with alternative words shown I can select if I want.
I have autocorrect set much the same way, to display alternatives I can select or just continue.I like to misspell words for cumedic effuckt so autocockerrect wouldn’t work anyway.
But basically with any keyboard you can set it to remember new words (with Heli either within app or in the phones personal dictionary). I have it that if I write something 3 times it automatically goes to the dictionary.The thing I wish existed is to prevent autocorrect from changing words that are correctly spelled. Basically it should correct misspellings, not change a correctly spelled word at all.
OpenBoard Fork with gesture typing
FlorisBoard Beta. Works and gets the job done. Also has a nice UI.
OpenBoard. Has what I need in terms of customization and I can turn off word prediction/correction (not sure if it even has it to begin with). Used to use Swiftkey several years ago but i like OpenBoard more nowadays.
I like correction of typos and prediction, I just don’t like correcting words into other words. I haven’t found a way to have one without the other. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Try Heliboard
It is a fork of openboard. Openboard is basically dead
Gboard is pretty good. I switched off Swiftkey because Gboard has the lil space bar cursor thing. Swipe typing is pretty great, and the predictions are fine.
I would prefer a non-Google keyboard, but I haven’t found one that’s easy to install and works the way I want it to.
Just switched to Futo after years and years of gboard. Its a 1:1 replacement, give it a try.
Not exactly 1:1. The main thing that I still miss is multi lingual typing. It’s not too big a deal to just switch the languages when I need to, especially since I only use 2. But that’s still more than I needed to do with Gboard or Heliboard.
I’ll give it a shot, thanks!
Yeah that’s exactly my experience, too. Nothing else I’ve tried has all the features I want.
SwiftKey has the spacebar cursor and swipe on backspace to select whole word to delete as well now.
I use anysoft keyboard cause I thought that it was the only foss option at the time and got used to it.
I guess you must like it then?
no. 😁
Lmao nice
Thank you for this (repeated) question! I will try some of these and collate my experiences.
- SwiftKey
Long-time fan, in spite of privacy concerns. My bar for comparing everything below.
- FUTO
First install, looks promising.
Indeed very customisable. What I don’t like is the (imho) far inferior swipe typing and the need to explicitly switch languages for the keyboard to use the appropriate dictionary. Also, I miss directional buttons for those single-character position adjustments (Futo only offers space-key swiping). Voice typing seems highlighted but I find it to be unbearably slow.
Verdict: will most likely uninstall again.
- OpenBoard
Installation somehow defaulted to “English (Australia)”, but no biggie.
Seems very customisable also, but lacks swipe typing (a deal beaker for me). Relies on the OS language (actually, keyboard) switcher and curiously lacks a shortcut to its settings (requiring the user to go so the rest through the Settings app (which, best-case, is a whopping 5 taps).
Verdict: privacy aside, cannot compete with SwiftKey for features and usability.
- Florisboard
Strainghtforward installation. Seems extremely customisable. No swiping nor autocomplete but both festures are clearly promised for a future release.
Verdict: apart from features promised in the future, thus seems an excellent keyboard.
- Heliboard
Straightforward installation. Language selection included a github redirect to manually download dictionary, which was semi nice.
Proper big-keyed numerical keyboard. Also extremely customisable. Space-key swiping even supports vertical movement.
Verdict: apart from lack of swipe typing, probably the best contender!
- Graffiti
Included because I friggin’ loved it back in the day. The (to my knowledge) only app offering graffiti input is badly broken and crashes immediately on modern Android versions. I remember it working quite well on earlier versions, but that was years ago.
Futo voice to text works nice and fast on my pixel 8 pro. Fractions of a second slower than google. Also that’s with the slower English 74 library (more data point, slower). They have an even larger one but the default is the smaller and faster English-39 model
I’m testing with the fastest model on a OnePlus 10 Pro, and speaking 3-4 words incurs a wait time of several seconds, way longer than simply typing them out would take.
What do you think about this? Seems great to me
This seems to be the same version as the OpenBoard through the Play store, so… same?
It has swipe typing though
