Yes, HeliBoard is an excellent, open source keyboard app.
this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2024
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This...plus you can ad swipe support.
and voice with futo
Is there an easier way to swap between the keyboards other than pressing the keyboard button in the lower right? I want to like press my power button to activate that instead of an assistant.
Hold space
Doesn't seem to work for me in several apps. Rip.
Another vote for HeliBoard, I've been using it for months and it's great and under active development.
Sounds promising enough, will take a look.
In case you didn't see coment responses, adding swipe and FUTO Voice are great additions.
This is great. I am trying heliboard right now and it works well. Thanks!
I've struggled with keyboards. Some to try out are OpenBoard, Heliboard, and Florisboard. All are on F-Droid.
But my favourite so far is FUTO Keyboard. Not without issues but I like it the best. It's not on F-Droid but you can use Obtanium to keep it up to date from the GitHub releases.
If you like weird shit, check out Thumb-key. It's on F-Droid and made by one of the Lemmy developers.
But my favourite so far is FUTO Keyboard.
Note, that FUTO Keyboard is proprietary, as its code is being distributed under source-available license: https://gitlab.futo.org/keyboard/latinime/-/blob/master/LICENSE.md
OP never asked for OSS 🙂. It's not big tech and has no network access so should suit the de-google theme.
On FUTO, they are using the term "Source First" (which they invented) because they pretty much think that OSI is funded by big tech and serves their purposes. My exaggerated paraphrasing but you can read their views here.
Basically they think the current model doesn't work, and they are experimenting with a different take. I don't have strong views but I'm happily using the keyboard while I wait and see if it works for them.
No multilingual typing with FUTO though right, or did I miss something?
As far as I can tell, just the switch menu (hold space), not multilingual. I didn't even realise it was a thing until you mentioned it (in my defence I only speak one language).
They have a language switch button actually if you hold the space-bar, but I need it to be without having to switch manually
Is that what multilingual is? If you hold space you can easily switch to any of the languages you added in settings. I thought multilingual was the ability to type in any of your added languages without having to toggle between them?
Yeah that's exactly it for me, I regularly switch between Dutch and English, so having to switch with a button is a nuisance. GBoard allows me to switch without any input
@Dave its quite clunky, you don't really switch languages more like open another instance of the keyboard, a simple language switch can fix this, I'll prob make an issue
While it's not on the main F-Droid repo, they distribute it in their own repository: https://app.futo.org/fdroid/repo
Futo is great, thumb-key is painful
FUTO keyboard managed to be very similar to OpenBoard and Heliboard, while solving some issues I had with those (buggy quirks that may well be hardware or software specific).
I used Thumb-key for a few months, to give it a real go, but I'm not convinced I ever got my speed up. Could do about 25wpm at my peak but I can do another 10wpm on a more normal keyboard (with word suggestions) and I don't think I'm particularly fast. Not sure what's normal for a mobile keyboard.
I have the same experience with Thumb-Key, though I keep thinking maybe I just didn't try long enough...
Futo keyboard isnt on fdroid not happy about that really hope they start publishing it there tho.
FUTO cannot decide to publish on the F-Droid main repository. The F-Droid team compiles all the apps that get published there themselves, so they decide what to publish. Well, and the F-Droid team will not publish FUTO keyboard, because it's not open-source.
they probably won't serve it on the official repo, because it's not really open source. you can look up their own repository and add it to F-droid, though.
Why would you want a F-Droid-signed app when you can have the app directly from the dev?
F-Droid is like a Linux distribution. And basically, the idea behind that is that open-source means nothing in terms of trustworthiness, unless you compile the source code yourself. The source code is what can be audited, whereas the binaries that the developer provides could be filled with malware and you'd never know about it.
Now, compiling everything yourself is complex and time-consuming, so this is where F-Droid / distros come in. Rather than trusting each and every app developer, you merely need to trust the F-Droid team.
Yes that's the thing. I trust my guys at FUTO and Rossman, and the other devs I use the apps from. But I don't know the F-Droid team
Seems you tested a lot of options. I've been testing Heliboard since the first reply I got, but uhhh.....
Would any of those you tested happen to support multilingual typing? As in, detecting when you switch languages without having to tap a button? I alternate between English and Portuguese a lot and having to tap something to switch is a nuisance.
I just spent ages looking into this and the answer is... Heliboard!
Go to languages and disable the option to use the system language. Then enable, say, Portuguese. Once enabled, tap on the name of the language and there is a Multilingual option to add another language (e.g. English).
I don't use this open so can't speak to it's quality, but give it a go and let me know how you get on!
Well I'll be.
I'll test it more extensively, still, neat!
No way, why is that so hidden? I'll check heliboard out! Thanks for the @, really appreciate it.
Now to find a swipe typing library
Even more frustrating was how every keyboard describes themselves as "multilingual" but they just mean you can switch between different languages, not that you can use multiple at once.
Yeah it's a totally different thing. I guess people who make the keyboards only really speak one language. It's taken so much time to find a keyboard that actually does it. Gboard does it and I think Swiftkey used to as well, but those are not open source obviously.
I still have a bit of configuring to do for Heliboard, but I think I can get it to work for me
Heliboard is my main. But I've been trying Futo Keyboard and its also very nice.
FlorisBoard has been amazing in terms of customiseability.
I've been using Florisboard and I like it well enough :>
I installed this after seeing this post the other day and am loving it so far ... which is amazing considering how many other keyboards I've tried and hated, and always ended up going back to GBoard -
https://lemmy.ml/post/17614064
The only thing I wish it had is emoji search
I use AnySoftKeyboard from F-Droid
Gboard runs OK without any permissions, so if you don't find anything good enough, that still could be your solution. I tried many other options but haven't found a bilingual swipe keyboard as good as Gboard unfortunately. I just gave it network permission to download dictionaries, switched off all permissions, and it's running smooth since months now.
Google apps still can communicate with each other on a regular Android, so restricting network access might not be enough to ensure data privacy
I've been very happy with OpenBoard. Accessing the emoji menu took a little getting used to (you hold down the enter button until it pops up), but it's great overall.
OpenBoard isn't updated anymore, use HeliBoard instead (it's a fork that's actively maintained). It's also on F-Droid https://f-droid.org/en/packages/helium314.keyboard/
I'm using Florisboard, it has one-handed mode and its very customizable. I haven't used any other keyboard, because I have no reason to.