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! 😄

  • amzd@lemmy.worldEnglish
    72·
    3 months ago

    The amount of people on here that are okay with a corporation phoning home everything you type is a bit scary. Googles Gboard and Microsoft’s SwiftKey are a privacy nightmare. Check out FUTO: https://keyboard.futo.org/

    • always offline
    • voice input
    • swipe typing
    • predictive text
    • auto correct
    • personalization
    • Paradachshund@lemmy.todayOP
      111·
      3 months ago

      I kind of hate takes like these because its such a false equivalence. People aren’t OK with it, but the vast majority of people don’t have time to fight this battle when every single aspect of modern technology is in a constant arms race to do more and more surveillance.

      It’s great there are people like you who want to promote more private alternatives, and even better that people are making more private alternatives, but the reality is most foss apps are far inferior user experiences to corporate apps. Until that changes it’s always going to be an uphill battle to convince people to switch, and it’s not because they’re “ok with corporate surveillance”. That isn’t even in the calculation to begin with and it’s not making any friends or building any bridges to imply that about people. You would help your cause a lot if you took a less judgemental approach to spreading the word about it.

      Sorry for the soapbox, but I see this attitude on here a lot and it really misses the mark and does damage to an otherwise worthy cause (spreading the word about better software). I don’t think you mean anything bad when you say this, but I just want you to understand how it comes off to people who aren’t invested in that lifestyle.

      • Yprum@lemmy.world
        01·
        3 months ago

        I can understand that some people don’t want to deal with changing keyboards even if they don’t want to be tracked. But you are literally here asking about keyboards. If this is not the place to talk about this then what is? Anyone interested enough to wonder about what keyboard they use should consider their privacy as the main aspect for a keyboard, as it is an app that can see everything you write, including passwords.

        but the reality is most foss apps are far inferior user experiences to corporate apps

        This is absolutely wrong and too often repeated as a mantra, and not because they have actually good UX, but because the corporate apps have it worse even (but they set the standard so anything that isn’t like theirs is bad). From all keyboards I have tried (many, including corporate ones, closed source, etc) the closed source ones have usually the worse UX. They start better and then worsen over time. You said you like the personalisation options, but often there’s less options in any closed source corporate keyboard. It took them years for gboard to actually let users have the number row always on top. I could have that in other keyboards long before gboard. Swiftkey was wonderful, but over the years it got so bloated that it lagged when used. There’s unfortunately not a perfect keyboard, but through all the posts in this thread there were a lot of good recommendations that allow you to choose good customisability, respect of user privacy, and also fringe use cases not often supported. And in general, the worse options are the closed source ones.

        The only real downside of Foss keyboards is that as they have more options they usually require a bit more set up time which puts many people off.

        I’m currently using Heliboard, lots of customisability, Foss, good language support and a must for me, multi language support. So far I am making less typos than with many other keyboards. The downside is no swipe support right in the app, but you can get it to work too if interested using 3rd party libraries.

        In the past I’ve been using gboard which was OK for a while but started making more and more typos and wrong corrections over time, that plus trying to degoogle myself pushed me away.

        Also anysoft keyboard, pretty nice, and was quite happy with it but again started getting tired of some typos I kept making.

        I am keeping an eye on futo keyboard too, which at the moment doesn’t support multi language support, maybe in the future when implemented I’ll try it.

    • Eiri@lemmy.world
      2·
      3 months ago

      Thanks. I’ll give it a try. I’d never found an alternative to Gboard that works as well when it comes to swipe typing, learning words missing from the dictionary, Japanese flick / handwriting input, and one-handed mode. It’ll be big if this is finally it.

      Edit: works well for an alpha. UI is unexpectedly polished. Gesture typing needs to get better, there’s no one-handed mode yet and I need an option to shrink the UI a bit because right now it’s huge. I’m really impressed with it so far though. Really nice that you can customize dictionaries and action buttons and stuff. Not quite baked enough for me yet but I see huge potential. I bought the premium version to support them and will be cheering for them while staying on Gboard for now.

    • skoell13@feddit.org
      1·
      3 months ago

      Holy shit thanks for the suggestion… I’ve been using Swift Key for years and tried other keyboard apps but none convinced me so far, so i’ve simply used Netguard to try to block Swift Key as much as possible. I’m currently typing using Futo and while I still miss some stuff (can you show the symbols on the keys as well? See screenshot). I already like it!

    • jetsetdorito@lemm.ee
      1·
      3 months ago

      This is the first non gboard keyboard that I don’t immediately feel uncomfortable typing om

    • MostlyGibberish@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      3 months ago

      As soon as FUTO gets a split layout, I’m definitely switching over, if for no other reason than the slider for how aggressive auto correct is. I’m so sick of Gboard constantly correcting the word I meant with one that doesn’t make any sense.

  • cordlesslamp@lemmy.today
    4·
    3 months ago

    I fucking hate Gboard spelling correct feature, it’s completely useless. I often ended up google the word (ironic isn’t it) to get the correct spelling.

    A little context, English is not my native language so sometimes I got trouble spelling some words. For example the other day, I couldn’t remember how to spell “aesthetic”, I did type in “asthetic” along with a few other variation, but all I got from the “suggestions bar” was “authentic” “asthenic” “asthma” “asthenia”.

    So I gave up and type “asthetic” in Google and it knew immediately and correct it to “aesthetic”.

      • gedaliyah@lemmy.world
        0·
        3 months ago

        It’s pretty easy to switch, es posible cambiar con una toca. You can map it to a long press or swipe or use a dedicated key.

          • gedaliyah@lemmy.world
            0·
            3 months ago

            How would you like to switch between them? I use 3 regularly with different layouts and I’ve never had an issue. For me, a keyboard swipe is quicker than a long press and tap to select, or a tap on a single button. It could be any of the above. You can also have the switching button in the top menu or by the space bar.

            Is there a better switching method for you?

  • noughtnaut@lemmy.world
    2·
    3 months ago

    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.

  • StorageAware@lemmings.worldEnglish
    2·
    3 months ago

    Thumb-Key

    It took a few weeks to get used to it and a few more to get comfortable, but now I don’t think I can go back. Before when I messed up, I would keep repeating the mistake until I was forced to slow down. Now I can get 40-50 WPM when I try.

    I do miss some things but they really aren’t deal breakers:

    • Clipboard History
    • Emoji Search
    • Autofill Integration
  • jg1i@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    3 months ago

    I use Gboard. I really want to like the FUTO keyboard, but it unfortunately sucks for typing. Not sure what magic secret sauce Gboard has, but with the FUTO keyboard I basically mistype almost every word. Maybe Gboard has some tap target corrections or something? I’ve tried pushing through with the FUTO keyboard for about a month, but I think I’m ready to uninstall it. )`:

  • SavvyWolf@pawb.socialEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    I’ve recently replaced Gboard with Heliboard. The three main things I want in an Android keyboard are as follows:

    • Word suggestions when typing.
    • Glide typing.
    • Not being super creepy about my data.

    Hwliboard does all those things and is super customisable as well.

      • SavvyWolf@pawb.socialEnglish
        1·
        3 months ago

        I don’t use the gif keyboard or autocomplete, so I comment about that. but it’s so much more customizable than gboard. Honestly surprised you found gboard to be customizable because in my experience it’s one of the least customizable ones out there.

        • Paradachshund@lemmy.todayOP
          2·
          3 months ago

          Maybe customizable is the wrong word, but I like the way I have it setup and I’ve found some other keyboards can’t replicate it.

  • Bremmy@lemmy.ml
    1·
    3 months ago

    RIP TouchPal

    Gboard now (yes it sucks it sends data to Google but it’s the best keyboard and works great on my zFlip cover screen)