Is there a privacy conscious keyboard that offers a floating mode like Swiftkey does? I'd love to switch.
this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2024
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Privacy
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I like florisboard, it's fairly customizable.
Here's one I made, called Thumb-Key. No internet permissions, made to be private.
Darn it, I popped into this thread to suggest Thumb-Key, and was beaten to it by the maker of the keyboard!
Thank you for making my phone usage much faster and enjoyable (written using Thumb-Key of course!) :)
I use this after messagease suddenly decided to charge a subscription fee.
It's pretty darn close in functionality. Highly recommend taking the time to learn it.
Thx! Ya the main reason I made it, was because messagease development died, and all my emails to the messagease team (their only contact email) went unanswered for like 2+ years. So it seemed like a good opportunity to do a from-scratch open source rewrite.
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I use Gboard cause it's the only keyboard that has the preferences that I want. I'm on GrapheneOS, so I just disable the network connection for Gboard.
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thumb-key
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Simple Keyboard on fdroid. Others have more features, but I can't switch. The swipe delete and swipe to move cursor are so smooth and I can't make any other keyboards work as well for me. I wanted florisboard to work, but it just felt clunky
Do you mean the SimpleMobileTools keyboard or the "normal" Simple Keyboard?
Coming from the Samsung keyboard (and before that Apple), I'm quite dissatisfied with the cursor movement in most Android keyboards (including HeliBoard).
the latter
Be sure to switch as soon as Fossify releases their fork of it, Simple Mobile sold out HARD! Thankfully the 2nd in command at Simple Mobile created Fossify and is releasing all the apps to keep everything open sourced.
Didn't notice that one. I'm using the first simple keyboard, from rkkr. Think the simple mobile one must be a later addition
I've wandered through a bunch of them. Used to use Florisboard. Unexpected Keyboard is pretty good too. The Hacker's Keyboard for some stuff. Mostly these days Heliboard for general typing.
I love the Samsung keyboard. It has a delete key
Samsung and Privacy don't mix. Not worth it IMO to use a closed source keyboard if you care about privacy.
While I do agree and have stopped using the Samsung keyboard, it does have many unique features that I still miss almost daily.
A few that come to mind:
- a special text editing mode (select all to the left, right; turn select mode on and then move around with arrowkeys while selecting, ...)
- visual resizing of the keyboard
- "2D" cursor control (move cursor diagonally)
- swipe spacebar left/right to change input method (while having spacebar cursor control enabled!)
If you'd like to have a more ergonomical keyboard: thumb-key is way worth the learning curve!
+1 for the keyboard. I thought it was a meme app at first but it turned out to be way better than I ever expected. Written from Thumb-key BTW.
Thx! (I'm the main dev)
You are posting in a privacy community confessing that you were long hooked on some keyboard for their shiny look and what not :-) What do you really want from a keyboard app besides privacy ?
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Funky characters ? https://f-droid.org/en/packages/mf.asciitext.lite/
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As simple as possible ? https://f-droid.org/en/packages/rkr.simplekeyboard.inputmethod/
Probably there is more privacy friendly ones in this long list : https://search.f-droid.org/?q=keyboard&lang=en
Have fun!
Swyping, the core functionality? And maybe one-finger mode?
Check out HeliBoard on f-droid.
I tried to switch to heliboard using multiple languages but its predictions is simply out of league compared to SwiftKey. Reluctantly, I switched back.
Yes, this.
Highly customisable, fast, multi language (so you don't have to switch), and you can even load in (a degoogled, but still proprietary) swiping library - so it swipes like gboard, looks however you like, it's fully local, and it's open.
Earlier this month they published 1.0 alpha but do install the 1.2 version from github for easier future updates (new signature): github/Helium314/HeliBoard.
I don't understand how to get the swipe library, could you link it by any chance pls.
See how to enable glide typing in the FAQ:
https://github.com/Helium314/HeliBoard?tab=readme-ov-file#faq--common-issues
Oh thanks so much, all worked out. I'm finally happy with my keyboard after like 2 years
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Heliboard is just perfect
Maybe you meant Izzy ? https://android.izzysoft.de/repo/apk/helium314.keyboard HeliBoard does not appear to be in the main F-Droid repository unless I'm overlooking something.
You are probably correct. Didn't check the repo.
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Been using Florisboard for a while. It is the most like gboard, although the swipe typing is not as good. All in all though, I'd still recommend.
Ay, also am using that one
Unexpected Keyboard on f-droid.
Florisboard on f-droid is pretty ok.