Heliboard goes into 1.0

TheFrirish@jlai.lu to Open Source@lemmy.ml – 318 points – Releases ยท Helium314/HeliBoard
github.com

The successor of Openboard, Heliboard finally comes out in 1.0 my favorite open source keyboard out there.

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HeliBoard with Swipe + FUTO have made replacing gboard possible for me. I feel like it's been a 90% replacement, a far greater degree than some of the decent keyboards currently available. I regularly use but swipe and speech to text in two languages. I'm really really happy and grateful for these tools. ๐Ÿ’œ

Just in case I'm asked, here's the basics steps to get it going:

  • I downloaded the release from https://github.com/Helium314/HeliBoard and then installed. (Or set it up via Obtainium until its ready for F-Droid release)
  • I downloaded the Swipe library linked on the HeliBoard Github page from here.
  • Under HeliBoard settings -> advanced, I clicked "load gesture library" and selected the downloaded swipe library
  • And for voice input, l downloaded Futo from the play store. FYI, it's free and offline, but not FOSS.

That's it.

Just setup the two apps with your specifics like the theme and etc. This is what mine looks like now:

How do you get your microphone option in the top right corner like that. Mine only shows up under the toolbar menu, after hitting the arrow key (top left corner)

You can tap and hold on the microphone button to pin it to the right.

Wow, that's a gamechanger! HeliBoard has so many neat little tricks like that, but sometimes they're hard to find.

Here's another one then: in heliboard settings, go to about, and hit "Description of hidden features." It's where I found that, plus a few more neat tricks!

this is great. I've been looking for a gboard replacement for so long
minor thing: how do i import my personal dictionary from gboard? the github page says something about .dict files but gboard exported a zip with a .txt file

Am I understanding correctly, you can swipe in two languages without hitting a "switch language" button like on Gboard? If so I may have to make the switch

Unfortunately no. That's remains part of the 10% that this solution doesn't replicate 1:1. But... you can use a spacebar gesture (e.g. vertical swipe) to quickly change languages. Works like a charm.

Really wish you could speak punctuation with FUTO.

Oh my goodness yes! I say punctuations constantly out of habit and then have to edit them out. But I'm also really impressed with FUTOs ability to determine punctuation based on pauses.

Yes, don't get me wrong, it is very, very, good. However I want full control over the characters being entered. I had thought that's what "verbose" mode was going to be, but honestly I can't figure out what that is.

Hi! Started using heliboard a few weeks ago, but what are those other two?