What android keyboard app do you use and why?

Paradachshund@lemmy.today to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 127 points –

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! 😄

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I love Heliboard it is a fork from Openboard. It has themes and is 100% offline

It's there a better swiping library for heliboard? The one they suggest is a lot worse than gboard's.

That's odd, it should be identical. The library linked in their FAQ is a package extracted from Google apps.

Maybe it's an old package? The quality is noticeably worse.

Does it have the things I called out as liking about Gboard?

It's insanely customizable; you can change all of the special characters to be anything else, as well as their positions.

Nice. That's actually even more customizable than I need. How does it do with the correcting correctly spelled words thing?

I had the same dilemma. Switched to HB and added in FUTO voice to replace Googles voice to text. SO doesn't like that it doesn't learn like Swiftkey does, but I like it because you can set it's aggressiveness of the autocorrect.

I'll have to check this one out I think. Lots of people in here recommending it. I'm guessing it's not on Google play?

I install directly from the developer's GitHub using Obtainium. However F-Droid is probably the more common method.

Is Fdroid like a third party app store app or something? I see people talk about it a lot on here but I don't know what it is.

That's exactly right. It's a third party app store for free and open source software.

How do you change the positions of letters and characters?

I dont think you can do letters, but under advanced settings you can edit the JSON config for positioning of everything else. Perhaps I'm wrong on letters and just haven't seen it.

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

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.

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.

Thank you!

I dropped gboard for privacy, switched to an open source option but struggled to get on with it .

Now typing on Futo and immediately loving it. Much appreciated.

If this is as good as it seems at first glance I'll definitely be paying for this.

Thanks for the recommendation, I just installed it!

When every fucking app is a privacy nightmare, it can be a huge slog finding alternatives for everything. Keyboard apps were on my list but you just made it super easy.

It's what I use right now and it's great in many aspects but I do still miss the graceful transition between languages that swiftkey was offering. With this I need to switch manually every time. With swiftkey I could write directly in any language and change in the same sentence and it could deal with it.

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.

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!

Looks great, but without an extended QERTZ layout I'm out. Switching from SwiftKey to HeliBoard now, since it has ÄÖÜ on there by default for a german layout.

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

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.

I've seen a few people mention this one so far. How does it stack up against my wants and dislike?

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.

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.

It's there a better swiping library for heliboard? The one they suggest is a lot worse than gboard's.

FUTO Keyboard. Its newer. Still needs improvements to gesture typing. Overall I like it.

The only thing I'm missing is the ability to use multiple languages at once.

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.

I have 4 languages i need to constantly switch between. It becomes frustrating after a while

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?

Does it have the features I called out that I like about Gboard?

I don't think there is a free/private keyboard with gifs or stickers. There's gboard, SwiftKey, Samsung keyboard, and increasingly sketchy keyboards from there on down.

I'd be happy to pay for one if it was good enough.

Oh, I meant free as in not proprietary. Free as in freedom.

I remember hearing about Fleksy keyboard years ago, although I can't really attest to it. It seems to have far fewer trackers than most proprietary keyboards, and just for analytics. Most other keyboards you find will send your data to advertisers or worse.

So far, most of the ones suggested here are free and private, meaning that they belong to the community and not to a company, and they do not collect or sell your data. That may be a factor for you or it may not, but I think a lot of people on Lemmy tend to care about it.

I've heard people say that the gesture typing is not great, but I've never had an issue.At least not more than any other keyboard.

For me, the voice typing is literally the best I've ever used.

I don't think there is a free and private keyboard that has gifs, stickers, etc. but I do like the way FUTO handles emoji.

I use typewise. It feels like there is more space for every button and i no longer accidentally press the space button

I don't know how you would... Where is it!?

Next to f and h

It takes some getting used to but i am pretty happy with it! You swipe up on the buttons for capitals and it has some gestures that makes deleting and restoring quite easy

Interesting. Admittedly, I'm almost always using my phone one-handed, but I know some people use two hands.

You dont need to press both space buttons simultaneously to add a space 😉

The keyboard itself is great, I just feel like the auto correction keeps doing everything in it's power to fuck up what I typed, more so than before I switched.

Do you use multiple languages? And if ye. Do you have a pro/paid version that switches between languages automatically?

Yes to both (English/German).

It might be the issue. I have the same with english and danish. I have asked in the telegram group about it

Wow this one is wild. I kind of like it at a glance but also I would have to relearn to type 🤔

Its not that difficult actually! They even have a mini game and a very good tutorial in the app!

I feel that its gotten a lot easier to type since i got this and a lot less typos

The less typos thing seems like it would be true even at a glance. That was my first thought seeing this.

Try it for a few days. You get into it real quick and it has a lot of useful features.

I absolutely adore this keyboard, I just wish they'd add a voice input button so I could use FUTO's voice to text with it.

Heliboard, very customisable and doesn't send all my typing to a MAGMA company's servers.

Nice, this is the first FOSS board I see that can actually replace my SwiftKey layout. Thanks for the suggestion

Did you know you can turn off autocorrect?

I've been using Swype since its inception and I've stuck with it after it was called SwiftKey and still use it now it's owned by Microsoft.

Gboard is okay enough but I've gotten more used to SwiftKey.

I like autocorrecting typos, I don't like autocorrecting words into other words. As far as I've found you can't have one without the other. Correct me if I'm wrong though.

No that's correct. It cannot distinguish between typos and different words

It's a shame. It doesn't seem like it would be hard to implement one that doesn't change correctly spelled words at all.

Well SwiftKey advertised with some AI (actually just algorithm) that could analyse the words you typed before and glean from context what you are trying to say and correct accordingly. I find it's wrong more often than not so I keep autocorrect off. Also I use SwiftKey in two languages, English and my native language, Dutch. It does not anticipate in which language it should predict at all. It mostly just favours English.

Yeah that's exactly the kind of thing I don't want. If I wrote a word and it's spelled correctly, I wish autocorrect would leave it alone instead of incorrectly guessing a different word. Oh well, one can dream.

No way to know if you meant to typo type or typo

If you type the wrong word, it will underline it and you can click on it, then tap on the correct auto suggested word. Very easy

Same, been using it long before it was bought by Microsoft. It has customizations I like, and (when it works properly) I can copy and paste between my phone and computer.

I've turned off autocorrect long time ago. Suggestions are fine. The one click more when I'm wrong is worth my time and I'm automatically educated to type correctly.

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

I have been using Thumb Key for a few months and while I generally like it, I have not been able to figure out how to remove things like the voice typing, pasting, and undo shortcuts. Every so often I accidentally hit undo while typing, which just erases my whole message irrecoverably since my other thumb hit the next key right after. I wish I could remove all those swipe controls on the side altogether since I never use them.

Just installed it and am finding it very slow going so far. Why are all the letters randomly placed?

It's not random! The placement is based on letter frequency.

So not a pattern an actual person can spot, whilst not being totally random.

It's a pattern that will feel more natural the more you use it

Yeah you can't really "infer" where a letter is, it just takes time to learn the loiations by heart. I think I have used this for 6 months or so, and I'm able to write 40wpm without looking at the keyboard. But damn was it slow in beginning

I love thumb-key with the two-hands symbols and numbers layout

We need to see a screen recording, with screen touches showing, of you using this...

Wot

It has a number of benefits over a normal keyboard:

  1. No need for autocorrect since the buttons are so large that it's hard to accidentally press the wrong one
  2. It's symmetrical so both thumbs can type any letter, so you can type faster, in fact the world record typing speed on a phone was set on a one-handed version of this, i'm sure with the two-handed you can go even faster
  3. Pretty much everything I need can be hit without switching to another layout (no need for a symbols page)
  4. The other features of the keyboard are easily accessible, like, copy/paste/select all/undo/redo etc.

It's awesome, it's foss, and not a keylogger like most keyboards.

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.

Futo voice to text works nice and fast on my pixel 8 pro. Fractions of a second slower than google. Also that's with the slower English 74 library (more data point, slower). They have an even larger one but the default is the smaller and faster English-39 model

I'm testing with the fastest model on a OnePlus 10 Pro, and speaking 3-4 words incurs a wait time of several seconds, way longer than simply typing them out would take.

Gboard is pretty good. I switched off Swiftkey because Gboard has the lil space bar cursor thing. Swipe typing is pretty great, and the predictions are fine.

I would prefer a non-Google keyboard, but I haven't found one that's easy to install and works the way I want it to.

SwiftKey has the spacebar cursor and swipe on backspace to select whole word to delete as well now.

Yeah that's exactly my experience, too. Nothing else I've tried has all the features I want.

Just switched to Futo after years and years of gboard. Its a 1:1 replacement, give it a try.

Not exactly 1:1. The main thing that I still miss is multi lingual typing. It's not too big a deal to just switch the languages when I need to, especially since I only use 2. But that's still more than I needed to do with Gboard or Heliboard.

SwiftKey. Yes, I hate it being from Microsoft. But has most of the pros already mentioned in this thread and a some important features (for me) that I haven't found with other keyboard:

I text a lot in Spanish, Portuguese and English; sometimes in French. I can use any of those languages with any preferred layout (qwerty, azerty) or as I do, Spanish layout as a base but from there, I get all characters needed to write properly such as ñ, ç, æ, ê.

Prediction is outstanding, I can start a phrase in one language and continue with other and still get very accurate suggestions. It has been my default keyboard long before Microsoft acquired the company and, for now, big corporate enshittification has been slow. En conclusión y para sumarizar: j'aime bien le SwiftKey clavier, ele tem funções que nenhum outro tem.

I'm using Heliboard a few months ago, I prefer privacy over personalization

OpenBoard. Has what I need in terms of customization and I can turn off word prediction/correction (not sure if it even has it to begin with). Used to use Swiftkey several years ago but i like OpenBoard more nowadays.

I like correction of typos and prediction, I just don't like correcting words into other words. I haven't found a way to have one without the other. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Ill be the lone user of Anysoft in this thread. Its on F-Droid and the playstore. Open source. Came from gboard, but realized that during all of the states banning porn thing I don't want google to know everything I type.

Its customizable and a good replacement for gboard IMO. It was a slight learning curve to be slightly more precise with my typing. Gboard you can just randomly mash and google seems to know what you're going for. I also found the autocorrect to be worse until I added enough of my own slang into the dictionary, but now its fantastic.

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. )`:

I've been using SwiftKey since like, 2012?

I just like the custom keyboards, and it learns my mistakes when I swipe. I always carry 2 phones, so I was able to sync the 2nd phone so my swipes are already learned on that phone.

Also, there's a snow keyboard that collect snow at the bottom of the screen as you swipe.

Has your autocorrect been getting worse? I use swipe and it seems to be mixing up words way worse than it used to.

Or am I just getting bad at typing lol

100% been getting worse. I was just talking to a buddy about how bad SwiftKey has been getting and I want to look for an alternative.

I'm fairly certain it's getting worse.

Does it let you have it switch themes automatically when in day/night mode?

Currently, I just use GBoard, but I'm following the development of Florisboard rather closely.

I just installed the floris 4.0 beta earlier. I think once they ship 4.0 and offer a type-ahead suggestion model Floris'll be worth considering as a serious Gboard replacement.

So far Floris is the best Gboard replacement candidate I've found.

Thanks for mentioning this. As a current florisboard user I didn't know I have so much to look forward to!

Heliboard!!
(also on F-Droi & Izzy)

Its amazing & completely open sauce.

Extremely configurable too, which I like (and with built in help that guides to eg where to find other libraries).
And if it helps someone - it's the closest experience to gboard, I only use this keyboard on my devices now. Works with multiple languages at the same time too.

Tho for gesture typing I did load Googles library (still offline).

This seems to be the winner across all the comments so far. How does it do with the correcting words to other words thing I mentioned?

Yeah, I don't understand what you meant by that - if I understood correctly it's the matter of sometimes autocorrect working as intended and sometimes not? Afaik that is just how it works.
Or if you meant correcting grammar (or sentence prediction?) vs correcting just the spelling ... I'm not familiar of any keyboards have that distinction.
(Never had this issue, including on Heli)

I have never used autocorrect, not even in T9 days.

I always use gesture typing with alternative words shown I can select if I want.
I have autocorrect set much the same way, to display alternatives I can select or just continue.

I like to misspell words for cumedic effuckt so autocockerrect wouldn't work anyway.
But basically with any keyboard you can set it to remember new words (with Heli either within app or in the phones personal dictionary). I have it that if I write something 3 times it automatically goes to the dictionary.

The thing I wish existed is to prevent autocorrect from changing words that are correctly spelled. Basically it should correct misspellings, not change a correctly spelled word at all.

AnySoftKeyboard.

It has a various styles, and a neat way of switching languages and their layouts.

Does it have the features I called out that I like about Gboard?

It's customizable, though you can't, say, arbitrary drag keyboard keys around on an Android device. There are add-on layouts, and it's possible to create those.

I don't know what "GIF" support involves. It has some support for various Unicode emojis. If this is some sort of Android-native rich text field functionality to embed arbitrary image files, not that I'm aware of, but I may also just not use any apps that support it...I think all the apps I use may just edit regular text.

It does not support swiping, something that I don't use but which some people do rely on.

The two most-significant things that it doesn't do that I would like:

  • It does not have the ability to attach arbitrary macro text strings to a key (well, absent from creating a new keyboard, I suppose), something that I have wanted.

  • It doesn't support the "drag on spacebar to move cursor in a text field" functionality that some Android software keyboards have.

Of the open-source keyboards, it's the one that I find the best.

I believe -- not in front of my device -- that you can adjust the aggressiveness of text correction or disable it.

You can set it up to keep numbers visible.

I just don’t like correcting words into other words.

So, the normal way to deal with this -- I don't remember whether Gboard supports this, but I suspect it does, and Anysoft definitely does -- is that autocorrecting keyboards don't correct a word that they recognize as a word into another word. The thing is that they won't recognize every word out there. So what you do is to create a "user dictionary", and add your word to it. Then the keyboard knows that your brand name or technical term or whatever is a real word. With Anysoft, you see a list of corrections immediately above the keyboard, and you can tap on the word in its uncorrected form to add it to the user dictionary. You can go into the keyboard settings to view and delete or edit terms in the user dictionary. I don't know about Gboard, whether this is an Android-wide convention or not, but with Anysoft, if you hit space after a word and get an unwanted correction, you can, before hitting any other keys, hit backspace and it'll delete the space and revert the correction; you can then tap space again and continue with the uncorrected word, if you only want a single uncorrected word and don't want to add it to your user dictionary.

Cool thanks for the detailed response. I don't use swipe typing at all so that one doesn't matter to me. Gif support on Gboard is you can press a GIF button and it lets you search and insert gifs from giphy. I like funny pictures, what can I say. 😄

I guess it ticks quite differently than gboard (which I don't use). It is very customizable, even with add on modules.

I don't use many of the options, though. I don't like long press. No idea what you mean with GIF support.

The autocorrect usually asks whether I accept the correction or not.

Cool thanks for the response. Gif support is a button that lets you search and insert gifs from giphy. I use it a lot because I like memes 😅

I use FlorisBoard Beta with the Material You theme. It looks amazing.

FUTO Keyboard also looks very pretty, but it's a bit bloated.

When you type our and it corrects to out, I guess it displays it in the middle of the word row, press "out" and hold it and drag it to the trashcan that appears above to "remove suggestion"

Definitely never knew about this. Does that only remove for that exact situation (our into out)? I would be afraid I'm removing out from the dictionary entirely.

It does not remove from dictionary, just for this suggestion/situation

Very cool, I think I'll have to check this one out. Thanks for all the replies.

FUTO FTW

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.

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".

Yeah it's horrible. Then I turn it off and realize that it's somehow even worse without it.

8vim

it's not easy!

That seems interesting, but it feels like it would be slower than thumb-key? How long have you been using it, and how high wpm do you have? For reference, I have used thumb-key for 6 months or so, and can achieve 40-45 wpm

thumb-key

I've used Thumb-key a little while too. 40 wpm is quite impressive!

I'm still very slow with 8Vim. Not sure if with more training you can get to decent speed, time will tell.

It's really cool and well made though.

I used Swiftkey until I noticed that Microsoft is adding weird shit to it and so I deleted it and now I just use the built-in Samsung keyboard because none of the others will be any better.

The Samsung keyboard definitely looks better but underperforms both gboard & SwiftKey when it comes to swipe typing, auto correction and spelling. I very much wish it was the best because I'm getting tired of the other two trying to force AI features on their keyboards.

I will hypocritically say that I use Gboard. I love Emoji Kitchen.

The day it comes to FUTO keyboard I'm outta this spyware.

Gboard. I want handwriting for Chinese and afaik no foss keyboard has that.

Gboard but with network permissions turned off. Works great. Haven't had any issues with an autosuggest and swiping. I don't use autocorrect.

I'm surprised to hear that it doesn't get angry at you!

Probably ignores the setting

It's not a setting, it's a permission. Android will just not allow an app to connect to the internet if it doesn't have that permission.

On regular Android you can't disable this one though, but on GrapheneOS for example you can.

Android and gboard both made by Google. I suspect there are exceptions to any system setting. What with google being evil... Sorry i mean, what with the "one rogue engineer" at google who creates so many google agreeable faux pas.

That's true, but at least on GrapheneOS, where you can actually disable this permission, Google's apps don't get any special treatment. So in that case I'd be fairly certain it actually can't connect to the internet.

Swift key with auto correct cranked to 11. Haven't found any other keyboard yet that lets me smash any nearby keys and have it fix it just fine.

Keyboard Designer.

It allows me to put the numbers on the bottom row and the space bar on the 2nd row and the backspace next to the L where it belongs.

Whoa so that's like a build your own keyboard app or something?

Yep. Took me a while to get the hang of the editor. There's a lot of options. Best bang for the buck I've spent on an app.

Just recently installed Gboard, because stock Samsung keyboard is so trash it gives me headaches.

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)

I want to like futo but I think it just needs more time. I'm using Gboard without the Internet access turned on (I'm using graphene OS) so I'm not worried about Google knowing anything I type.

I mostly use the swipe to text feature and I just haven't found another keyboard that does it better than Gboard (unfortunately)

I use Fleksy, probably not as popular because it doesn't have swype typing but I find the autocorrect works really well, and it's easy to change the word if you don't like what it corrected to by swiping up or down to different options, and you can swipe left to delete words. Built in gif support too, and there's an extension to make the number row always show.

Nice! That sounds pretty great (I don't use swipe typing at all so no loss there). When you delete a word from correction, is it only deleting it in that exact situation (our to out), or is it deleting out from the dictionary entirely? Hoping it's the former and that might be exactly what I'm looking for if so.

Sorry, to clarify, swiping left is like backspace a word, if I swiped after now it'd delete "now", then "after" if I did it again. If you typed our and it changed to out, you could swipe up and it'd revert back to our.

You can add or remove words from the dictionary by opening the app separately too, but most settings are accessed from the keyboard.

FlorisBoard Beta. Works and gets the job done. Also has a nice UI.

While I normally use whatever the default keyboard app is, I do sometimes use Unexpected Keyboard. It doesn't have auto-correct but it has more keys available than even normal keyboards do. It may take some getting used to though as, for example, to use the "alts" for each key, you have to swipe in that direction. So for example if you wanted to press "Esc" with the default settings, you'd press q and swipe diagonally down and to the right.

For customization, I don't know if you can add images or gifs but there is some visual options and you have pretty much full control over the layout of the keyboard and what keys it has.

What makes it unexpected?

I know you're probably just joking but I'm not actually sure why it's called that. The only thing it does that other keyboards don't (outside of having more keys than anyone would probably need) is that, I'm pretty sure it's the smallest keyboard app for android. It's only 1 MB while the second smallest keyboard I know is the LG Keyboard and that uses a little over 4 MB.

are there any good ones for dyslexics? I hate SwiftKey but have yet to find anything that helps with spelling. I know I can use voice to text but sometimes you don't want speak to your phone in a crowded place.

Mostly Thumb Key, but I'm trying out Heliboard right now thanks to the recommendations here and it's pretty nice. I haven't used a good swiping keyboard for a while.

I use Gboard because I can't find another keyboard with good japanese 9 key flick typing.

i used to use touchpal, because I liked that I could swipe up on a key to get the upper case version of the letter, or swipe in other directions to get other variants.

They enshittifies the product a few years back by inserting ads into every app i was using.

These days i just use the android default, but I miss the functionality touchpal had.

Software is in such a sad place these days. Everything is in a constant state of decay it feels like.

My keyboard autocorrected this into thus once

I'm using the default samsung one, don't know the name