Privacy with Google's Gboard

noob@lemm.ee to Android@lemdro.id – 242 points –

The only app I can't live without. Except for gboard, all of my applications are Foss. There is no competition for gboard's swipe typing, not to mention its many capabilities like as searching for gifs, stickers, being able to paste copied images, translating, and so on. I'd like to know how I can use gboard while maintaining my privacy. According to what I've heard, it sends all typing data to Google's server. If you ask me, that's a massive no-no. Do you have any suggestions?

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My main deal breaker with most open source keyboards is the usually pretty bad multi language support. I type in three languages all the time and don't want to have to switch keyboards every time I switch the language. Currently using SwiftKey, just because it handles multi-language (fairly) well.

There is a fork of openboard with multiple language support, but it's missing glide typing. When these two features are merged it's the perfect keyboard. Until then the language switch icon works well enough.

You mean it can auto recognize the language you're using?

Same. Gboard is the only software keyboard capable of multi-language input that "just works". I tried OpenBoard, AOSP, Floris, Anysoft and while they seem okay in general, none supports polyglots as well as Gboard

This is also my main deal breaker. Gboard does pretty well for me but I only type in two languages.