Hi friends. My quest to remove Google products from my life continues.

I’ve always been very fearful of swapping keyboard apps. I can think of no better way to track someone than to bug their keyboard. How can I trust any keyboard software, really? My wishlist:

  • Something that addresses my privacy concerns
  • Supports both english and portuguese dictionaries at the same time
  • Has a dark theme
  • Is available on some sort of store, so I don’t have to download APKs for every single update

Thanks!

  • Smokeydope@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12·
    1 year ago
    1. download F-droid appstore, all apps on there are open source which by nature reduces privacy concerns and if they do have features which impact privacy there will be a warning about what it does.
    2. search through a few of the keyboard apps and find one that catches your eye, preferably one still occasionally updated within past year I found one I liked and trust but don’t have my phone with me, think it was called ‘simple keyboard’ or something. Happy hunting!
    • SecretSauces@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      1 year ago

      Actually, reading through some of the other comments, someone mentioned an OpenBoard fork with swipe functionality and it’s actually working very well! Typing is responsive, prediction gets most of my words on the first go, and the backspace deletes the word instead of single letters (which is a preference I like).

  • MasterBuilder@lemmy.oneEnglish
    7·
    1 year ago

    Lots of mentions of OpenBoard here. There is a fork that is under development now, and I am writing this with it now. It is not on F-Droid yet.

    FlorisBoard and AnySoft are good, but each has enough annoyances that I come back to OpenBoard, which has its own annoyances, but for me are a bit less annoying.

  • iByteABit [he/him]@lemm.eeEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    First off, you have nothing at all to fear when changing keyboards, they are all switchable easily through the notification dropdown.

    For something wildly different, I’d recommend Thumb-Key, it takes a while to get used to it but I’ve gotten faster and more accurate with it than with a normal keyboard.

    Otherwise Openboard is really good, and there’s a fork of it too if you like swipe typing.

  • root@aussie.zoneEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    Been using Florisboard for a few months and really liked it. Just a couple of days ago I discovered “Unexpected Keyboard” and I’m giving it shot. Very different.

  • SecretSauces@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    Although Swype has been dead for quite a while now, that keyboard has been the best for swipe texting I’ve ever found. I tried Gboard, sucks. OpenBoard doesn’t have swipe functionality (that I’ve found), and am using AnySoft right now, with minimal success. I have to keep backspacing to retype words, or manually type them, sometimes my swipes don’t register into words, its just really annoying.

    I wish someone would rebuild Swype so i could go back to it.

    Edit: someone mentioned an OpenBoard fork that enables swipe texting and it’s great! So, if you’re looking for swipe, that’s my reco

    • Treczoks@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Yep, using the same. Very good for switching between languages, and a good selection of different keyboards for foreign languages. I use an English one, and a German one with the Umlauts as popups instead of a “complete” keyboard with the Umlauts as separate keys.

      Downside: Completion is not as smart as the default keyboard, but that is easily f-ed up anyway if you post/write in several languages, so while the completion is simpler, at least it uses the matching dictionary.

  • Canadian_Cabinet @lemmy.caEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    I really like Florisboard, but the largest difference between that and Openboard is that Florisboard doesn’t have spellcheck. I leave my keyboard in permanent Spanish, which I use for English as well as there is only one letter difference between the alphabets

  • JoKi@feddit.deEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I use Typewise. It’s not open source but there is a offline version. Both of your needed languages are available. Unfortunately the price is very high. But the honeycomb layout is pretty good, once you are used to it.