Tbh nothing comes even close to Gboard for me. The layout, the autocorrect, the simplicity, the swipe typing. Everything is perfect.
this post was submitted on 18 May 2025
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I find GBoard autocorrect to be as horrendous as all the others, so it offers no tangible benefits.
None, at least if you don't mainly use English.
Heliboard (with closed source swipe gesture library)
There's no comparison to GBoard. I've tried them all. GBoard is good at everything but specifically it is by far and away the best at text prediction and autocorrect.
Next best is FUTO keyboard.
Gboard never reached the level at which Swiftkey was at dual-language typing, at least for me. I'm Romanian native speaker and also use a lot of English. With Swiftkey I had almost no problems. With gboard I had to switch languages to make them work.
I'm surprised at how good Heliboard became lately at exactly this scenario. I have Romanian-English set and it works great.
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I find GBoard autoincorrect to be as bad as any other. I stopped using it because of that, and I've been on Android since 2009
Maybe you should try again, it's been improved over the last 15 years.
I tried many different keyboards but honestly nothing matched up to SwiftKey, now sadly owned by Microsoft, so I locked its internet access using RethinkDNS (or NetGuard)
Openboard is the only good one on android
Sadly it isn't maintained anymore :(((
Heliboard is a close second but you can't increase the buttons' size
I just wanted to say that, while Heliboard is a hell of a keyboard, I can't understand why nobody makes something close to keymonk keyboard. I never used a virtual keyboard that could get even close to that.
FlorisBoard with the Material theme.
Tried many, but FlorisBoard's bugs bug me the least, not that there are many. The one feature I wanted was password manager autofill bar, FlorisBoard worked the best at the time and has been solid since. Material theme is nice too.
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When possible, I use Swype. I have the apk, and it works on most things.
When that's not possible, florisboard or heliboard. Both can do swipe typing, though neither is as good at it as swype.
Wow I didn't know Swype was still around I used that WAY back in the day. Like android 4-5...
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FlorisBoard is open source and supports
Thumb-key is also an interesting concept but very different with a higher learning curve
I tried it recently - no swiping. Maybe it's the language? Although it does say in the app it's been disabled.
swipe has always worked for me with florisboard
EDIT: kinda funny that I'm downvoted when I literally typed this comment using swipe functionality on florisboard lol
I thought they got rid of swipe for now because they were recreating it?
swipe has always worked for me with florisboard
EDIT: kinda funny that I'm downvoted when I literally typed this comment using swipe functionality on florisboard lol
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I've been using Microsoft Swiftkey for years. Haven't had any issues with it.
I've been putting up with Futo keyboard for privacy reasons even though it's not better than Swiftkey which has had the best predictions by far and had served well for many years
I am looking for a privacy friendly SwiftKey alternative, so I will give it a try. Seems like there is sadly not much alternative.
There are plenty of alternatives, they're just all terrible
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I said a while back on Mastodon that people don't realise just how bad Gboard is. I don't understand how a company with so many resources sunk into machine learning can fuck up something as bread and butter as a keyboard.
I'm still gutted that Minuum Keyboard never got open sourced. It's the best keyboard I ever used.
HeliBoard. However for swipe typing it'll take some practice to get used to, it's more sensitive to swipe accuracy and you may need to reset your muscle memory.
How do you actually enable swipe typing? I have HeliBoard installed, looked through all the options, but it just doesn't. Pixel 8.
EDIT: It looks like you have to enable a closed-source swipe-typing library in Advanced settings at the bottom: "Load gesture typing library"
I see you already figured it out but for anyone who hasn't, you download a swipe library for heliboard Here by picking raw and then uploading it to heliboard in advanced settings>load gesture typing library.
I need to figure that out one of these days. I forgot to switch back to gboard if I really want to do that. I wish it was as simple as just enabling. But to go look up the procedure and what I need to download.
I'm not sure if you figured it out but for anyone who hasn't, you download a swipe library for heliboard Here by picking raw and then uploading it to heliboard in advanced settings>load gesture typing library.
No but thank you. It's just always been one of those things that only occurs to me for some reason when I couldn't dive into it. "I'm busy, it would be nice to swipe. I should look into that later". Later i've got plenty of time and don't mind typing regular. It's like a vicious cycle lol
I did that for a long time. I just had to go back in my comments to find the link to reply to you because I forgot how I did it lmao
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