Hey guys, im just got rid of gboard and im already missing the autocorrect and swipe to type features. I know there has to be a privacy friendly option out there. Thank you for your help; im fat fingering every other key, pls save me
FUTO Keyboard is hands down the best option.
If you have philosophical objections to the FUTO license, then your options are Heliboard and Florisboard. Heliboard is currently better, but Florisboard has promise.
FUTO: the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog
… I was planning on testing them all here but that’s so good I’ll think I’ll stop there! I see from recent reviews they are working on improving swipe even more :D thank you so much!
Please pay the licensing fee for ongoing development if you plan to use for an extended period👍
I’ll probably jump around a bit now, by if its where I settle, I for sure will. Thanks :)
Thank you for this recommendation, it’s exactly what I was looking for to get me off of GBoard.
Doesn’t even detect I am glide typing about half the time. Unusable on my Google Pixel 4a.
Which one of the three I suggested?
FUTO is definitely a bit more resource hungry. Try Heliboard, you need to add a separate library to enable swiping, but it’s definitely way lighter.
Futo. Will try Heliboard once I get Graphene installed, thanks
Which one is closest to SwiftKey? I got too used to its placement of symbols/special characters, its arrow keys, its always present number row, and it’s left-handed friendly numpad. Been using it for almost 15 years now so it’s going to be hard to switch to a keyboard that doesn’t have an identical layout. I need to do it, though. Its autocorrect went to shit after Microsoft purchased it and I’ve been wanting to switch for years.
Seconding Skarn’s comment. Heliboard has a lot of options for what is and is not displayed, shortcuts, etc. If you can’t get it the way you want it through the options, a feature in settings allows you to edit the scripting for the layout. I have all the punctuation to the left of the space bar so I don’t put periods between each word. It took me no more than 10 mins to configure that, including wasting time backing up the original script (it has an option to return it to defaults), and I’m a “hobbyist” progammer at most.
This sounds exactly like what I’m looking for. I can’t code but I’m not afraid of scripting. Thank you.
I found switftkey rather buggy, and stopped using it as soon as GBoard added decent multilingual support, so I really can’t remember the key placement. All are pretty heavily customizable, I’d be very surprised if you couldn’t get them to a state where you’re comfortable.
I’ve been trying it but the swipe to text is absolutely atrocious I spend 90% of my time going back and correcting.
I like the FUTO keyboard, but it’s just so annoying that it doesn’t support multi-lingual typing and the swipe just isn’t as good as Gboard.
It does support multilingual typing. Rather recent addition.
Why did I not know this, I’ve been suffering for so long. Makes it 50 times better. If only the swipe worked better now.
I really like heliboard. It works without network permissions, has autocorrect, and can do emojis
Looks tempting but the repo has active issues going back 2 years without being resolved. I’ll still probably give it a go tho, seems a popular opinion, thanks
I’ve been using it without major caveats since October last year. Even tried the proprietary swiping library you can install (it uses the Gboard one iirc, but OFC it can’t do shenanigans since it’s isolated by the app and not connected to the internet)
Nice that sounds perfect honestly! I’ll have go try it next. Thank you
I cannot see it in the Play Store.
f droid
Ah.
Heliboard.
You can couple FUTO speech.
Personally, I have gotten excellent traction from Heliboard. I would recommend it.
Heliboard is decent
Heliboard would be my recommendation. Been using it for more than a year now. Started using it when OpenBoard was basically dead in the water and it was merely a fork rather than its own thing and I can safely say it’s the best privacy friendly keyboard I’ve used. Tried so many, FUTO, FlorisBoard but I found Heliboard to be the best. If you want Swipe-to-type features then you can download a proprietary library from the github of Heliboard iirc and load it in the settings of Heliboard.
Oh and did I mention it’s very customizable? Oh yeah. I think you’ll love it, give it a try :D
Florisboard is also amazing. One of a very few that dont actually track what you type. The other one i know of with no tracking is anysoftkeyboard.
I use helioboard and floris board for other languages. Been liking it, very customizable. I changed the spacing on the keyboard to fit my fingers, so i make less mistakes.
I miss inserting gifs from gboard. Does anyone have a solution to that?
I just use Gboard and block network
Another user said they used GrapheneOS to block network, what’s your method?
Same here. But I believe it is possible with netguard as well, maybe other apps as well
tried 'em all and they all suck. it’s possible there are options that work for monolingual people, but for simultaneously using 3-4 languages without annoying switching back and forth, there is no alternative.
since android 15 you can disable network access to any app and that’s how I run gboard, the only google app I have on my mobile devices.
If you are exploring, I’d suggest giving Unexpected Keyboard a try. You might like it even though there is no autocorrect.
