Gboard is getting visibly worse almost on a daily basis, especially autocorrecting perfectly legitimate words, presumably based on dubious analysis of other people’s writing. So what’s worth trying? The ability to swipe type is a big plus
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I only have Hacker’s Keyboard installed because it’s the only one that’s stupidly simple while also giving a full standard keyboard complete with function keys and whatnot so I have as much control over remote applications as I do messing with them at home on the actual machine with a real keyboard.
Been using FUTO FOR A CHILW ANF I DONT UAVE ANY COMPLAINTA REALLY
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This thread is about virtual keyboard tho…
I use Fcitx for Android for Japanese typing.
Though, sometimes I still revert to old Mozc Android release, which not updated by Google anymore for more than five years.
Seems pretty recent, I’ve been looking for Heliboard upgrade because it’s not that great for other languages. Thanks for the mention
God, the autocorrect is horrible nowadays. Hey Google, team is a fucking word. No, I’m not talking about a team. Fucking figure it out.
Fucking Tram! Case and point.
8vim !
tOndO
Another vote for FUTO keyboard.
Except, the swipe feature really likes to autocorrect to the most outlandish words that have never entered into my vocabulary at any point in my nearly 40 years on this godforsaken planet.
Heliboard (with closed source swipe gesture library)
I didn’t realize how bad Samsung keyboard was until now. Id forgotten I never changed it on my phone (I’ve had my phone for like 5 years) , even though I swapped to Gboard on my Samsung watch ages ago.
HeliBoard. However for swipe typing it’ll take some practice to get used to, it’s more sensitive to swipe accuracy and you may need to reset your muscle memory.
How do you actually enable swipe typing? I have HeliBoard installed, looked through all the options, but it just doesn’t. Pixel 8.
EDIT: It looks like you have to enable a closed-source swipe-typing library in Advanced settings at the bottom: “Load gesture typing library”
I see you already figured it out but for anyone who hasn’t, you download a swipe library for heliboard Here by picking raw and then uploading it to heliboard in advanced settings>load gesture typing library.
I need to figure that out one of these days. I forgot to switch back to gboard if I really want to do that. I wish it was as simple as just enabling. But to go look up the procedure and what I need to download.
I’m not sure if you figured it out but for anyone who hasn’t, you download a swipe library for heliboard Here by picking raw and then uploading it to heliboard in advanced settings>load gesture typing library.
No but thank you. It’s just always been one of those things that only occurs to me for some reason when I couldn’t dive into it. “I’m busy, it would be nice to swipe. I should look into that later”. Later i’ve got plenty of time and don’t mind typing regular. It’s like a vicious cycle lol
I did that for a long time. I just had to go back in my comments to find the link to reply to you because I forgot how I did it lmao
Yes i should probably document it just in case as well.
I’ve been putting up with Futo keyboard for privacy reasons even though it’s not better than Swiftkey which has had the best predictions by far and had served well for many years
You can help improve and contribute your swipe typing data by swiping some sentences on their website: https://swipe.futo.org/
Are there any privacy considerations if swiftkey is restricted from internet access?
I am looking for a privacy friendly SwiftKey alternative, so I will give it a try. Seems like there is sadly not much alternative.
If you go with FUTO keyboard, do these as soon as you download it:
- Turn on the machine learning feature for swipe typing (entirely local - nothing about the keyboard phones home)
- Allow curse words
- Make autocorrect your bitch, and I mean really force it
If you do these things, it will - eventually - figure out your typing habits. But it’s worth it. I’ve been using it for a month or so and, outside of some odd quirks, it’s working pretty well. Even has a clipboard manager and a “paste” button (for fat-fingerers like me), among other neat tools.
Oh, and don’t forget to drop it into Obtainium so it can be updated, as it’s not offered through any app store.
- Make autocorrect your bitch, and I mean really force it
Can you elaborate?
Autocorrect will either “fix” common words into something else, or outright refuse to fix super common typos. You have to delete suggestions that you know you will never use, and add words and abbreviations (I use “appt” a lot, for example, the keyboard used to correct it to “and”).
This may be common knowledge for a lot of you, but some people don’t realize that you can tweak those things.
Can Futo handle three languages at once? That’s why I am still on SwiftKey.
That’s a good question to which I don’t have an answer. I’m very much a single-language person.
No worries, happy for you. I installed and tested it. Pleasantly surprised that it can do many languages and many layouts, even obscure ones like Colemak-dh.
But several languages don’t have autocorrect and you’d have to find (or create) then install a language file manually. Reasonable given the alpha version, but not good enough for me yet.
Have you experienced a battery life hit when using the transformer tuning feature? It warns that it has a major impact so that’s why I didn’t turn it on.
The transformer tuning only runs when charging. Which causes a major slowdown and heating issue on my phone. So, apart from that and some latency issues in demanding apps due to nature of the LLM prediction it is alright.
Not really. I saw the warning as well, but just went for it. Haven’t noticed a difference.
Futo looks good! It’s the emoji prediction that kept me hooked to SwiftKey. Anyone know the word that will suggest the 😘 emoji? Kiss and heart suggest others. (I know it’s a little cringe, but my partner and I use it a lot in messages so I need it to be convenient.)
I just got futo from Google play store.
I would delete that and get it either from F-Droid (I just learned about the F-Droid listing last night), or grab the APK from FUTO directly.
Try to stay away from the Play store when it comes to privacy-related stuff like this.
Why
Play store is a privacy nightmare. Apps you get from there are not quite the same as their non-play store equivalents, even if it’s technically the same app. Nextcloud, for example, just went through this with their Play store version. Google recently forced them to remove the “all files access” permission… You know, the entire point of Nextcloud? But the non-Play store version that you can get from F-Droid still had that permission intact.
Luckily Google backed down from the totally-couldn’t-forsee-this backlash, but still. Google puts arbitrary limitations on what can be uploaded there, and FUTO keyboard is no exception.
There are plenty of alternatives, they’re just all terrible
I’m using AnySoftKeyboard, which is open source and also has swipe controls
I said a while back on Mastodon that people don’t realise just how bad Gboard is. I don’t understand how a company with so many resources sunk into machine learning can fuck up something as bread and butter as a keyboard.
I’m still gutted that Minuum Keyboard never got open sourced. It’s the best keyboard I ever used.
I’m a swipe typer and I’m sticking with open-board-gesture-typing-v1.4.5.apk, which is some kind of fork of gboard before it went totally off the rails. The only complaint I have about it is that it decided to stop capitalizing “I” for some reason and I haven’t been able to fix it, so I have to hit the suggestion each time.
OpenBoard is discontinued, the last update is from 2022.
Heliboard is continuation fork of OpenBoard, with more updates.
Don’t worry, gboard still doesn’t capitalize i.
