this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2024
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HeliBoard, a privacy-conscious open-source Android keyboard based on AOSP/now-unmaintained OpenBoard, is now available on F-Droid (f-droid.org)
submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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HeliBoard keyboard is an improved fork of the now-unmaintained OpenBoard keyboard. It does not require internet permission, allowing it to be used 100% offline.

Features

  • Add dictionaries for suggestions and spell check

    • Build your own, or access them here, or in the experimental section (quality may vary)
    • Additional dictionaries for emojis or scientific symbols can be used to provide suggestions (similar to "emoji search")
    • Note that for Korean layouts, suggestions only work using this dictionary; the tools in the dictionary repository cannot create working dictionaries

  • Customize keyboard themes (style, colors, and background image)

    • Can follow the system's day/night setting on Android 10+ (and on some versions of Android 9)
    • Can follow dynamic colors for Android 12+

  • Customize keyboard layouts (only available when disabling system languages)

  • Multilingual typing

  • Glide typing (only with closed-source library ☹️)

    • Library not included in the app, as there is no compatible open-source library available
    • Can be extracted from GApps packages ("swypelibs"), or downloaded here

  • Clipboard history

  • One-handed mode

  • Split keyboard (only available if the screen is large enough)

  • Number pad

  • Backup and restore your learned word/history data

Hidden Functionality

Features that may go unnoticed, and further potentially useful information

  • Long-pressing the Clipboard Key (the optional one in the suggestion strip) pastes system clipboard contents.
  • Long-pressing keys in the suggestion strip toolbar pins them to the suggestion strip.
  • Long-press the Comma-key to access Clipboard View, Emoji View, One-handed Mode, Settings, or Switch Language:
    • Emoji View and Language Switch will disappear if you have the corresponding key enabled;
    • For some layouts, it's not the Comma-key, but the key at the same position (e.g. it's q for Dvorak layout).
  • When incognito mode is enabled, no words will be learned, and no emojis will be added to recents.
  • Sliding key input: Swipe from shift or symbol key to another key. This will enter a single uppercase key or symbol and return to the previous keyboard.
  • Hold shift or symbol key, press one or more keys, and then release shift or symbol key to return to the previous keyboard.
  • Long-press a suggestion in the suggestion strip to show more suggestions, and a delete button to remove this suggestion.
  • Swipe up from a suggestion to open more suggestions, and release on the suggestion to select it.
  • Long-press an entry in the clipboard history to pin it (keep it in clipboard until you unpin).
  • Swipe left in clipboard view to remove an entry (except when it's pinned)
  • Select text and press shift to switch between uppercase, lowercase, and capitalize words
  • You can add dictionaries by opening the file
    • This only works with content-uris and not with file-uris, meaning that it may not work with some file explorers.
  • Debug mode / debug APK
    • Long-press a suggestion in the suggestion strip twice to show the source dictionary.
    • When using debug APK, you can find Debug Settings within the Advanced Preferences, though the usefulness is limited except for dumping dictionaries into the log.
      • For a release APK, you need to tap the version in About several times, then you can find debug settings in Advanced Preferences.
      • When enabling Show suggestion infos, suggestions will have some tiny numbers on top showing some internal score and source dictionary.
    • In the event of an application crash, you will be prompted whether you want the crash logs when you open the Settings.
    • When using multilingual typing, the space bar will show a confidence value used for determining the currently used language.
  • For users doing manual backups with root access: Starting at Android 7, some files and the main shared preferences file are not in the default location because the app is using device-protected storage. This is necessary so the settings and layout files can be read before the device is unlocked, e.g., at boot. The files are usually located in /data/user_de/0/<package_id>/, though the location may depend on the device and Android version.

Planned features and improvements:

  • Customizable functional key layout
    • Will likely result in having the same functional key layout for alphabet and symbols layouts
  • Support for alt, ctrl, meta and fn (#479)
  • Less complicated addition of new keyboard languages (e.g. #519)
  • Additional and customizable key swipe functionality
    • Some functionality will not be possible when using glide typing
  • Ability to enter all emojis independent of Android version (optional, #297)
  • (limited) support for customizing all internally used colors
  • Add and enable emoji dictionaries by default (if available for language)
  • Clearer / more intuitive arrangement of settings
    • Maybe hide some less used settings by default (similar to color customization)
  • Customizable currency keys
  • Customizable clipboard toolbar keys (#513, #403)
  • Ability to export/import (share) custom colors
  • Make use of the .com key in URL fields (currently only available for tablets)
    • With language-dependent TLDs
  • Internal cleanup (a lot of over-complicated and convoluted code)
  • (optionally?) move toolbar key pinning to a setting, so long press actions on unpinned toolbar keys are available
  • Bug fixes

What will not be added:

  • Material 3 (not worth adding 1.5 MB to app size)
  • Dictionaries for more languages (you can still download them)
  • Anything that requires additional permissions
all 35 comments
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[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

You had me at "number pad"

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Now after a day of intense testing, I got to say the keyboard is great. It has everything I needed to switch away from gboard. Even background image function and translucent keys and dual language. I really hope this project is maintained forever, that's how good it feels to use this keyboard.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Thanks, this is basically all I needed to hear. Im gonna try it out immediately.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Some options are a bit hidden and you got to tinker a bit to understand what keyboard layout you want, but it's all there.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Works great so far!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Tried it out but my language sadly has the wrong layout so for now I'll stick to Gboard with disabled internet access.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Why does it need to read and write to my contacts?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

In order to add their names to your dictionary. You don't have to allow it. But given that there's no internet access for the keyboard - it seems pretty safe

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Have you asked it to show contacts as suggestion? If not then deny.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

Definitely check out the Hidden functionality part of the readme (it's also in this post's body)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

~~How do I enable the multi lingual typing? In the keyboard settings I added German and English. Now I can switch with the spacebar, but I require it to work automatically. It should detect if I'm writing in english or German and then automatically change word suggestions and change auto correct.~~ solved

~~Also not switch qwertz with qwerty layout, as obviosly I know only qwertz keyboard. Also üäöß need to be hidden and replace uaos automatically by dictionary. AS it does in Gboard. I'll report back if I find the option.~~ solved

Edit: Okay looking good with the auto correct and suggestions now, I had to click on my keyboard language qwertz ~~German~~ and add English to the multilingual and not both separately. Testen wir dies nun mit Deutsch. Works.

Ignore the double post. It appeared out of nowhere. Strange.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I wonder where the second post came from. It was just suddenly there, without me copy pasting anything.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I can't find this on f-droid for some reason...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I had the same problem using droid-ify until I uninstalled openboard for some reason. (Technically I uninstalled the fork that has since turned into helibord, but it was called open board also before they renamed it for f-droid release, so it still showed up as open board in droid-ify, just a newer version)

It did show up in the normal f-droid app for me though

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Confusing... I'm currently using openboard; does that mean I'm actually using heliboard?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Someone forked the project (made a copy and started making updates and improvements to the copy independent of the original developer) and I installed it directly from the forked github repo, where it was getting updates. But they didn't rename it until they published it on f-droid, so the app still showed up as openboard on my phone, just a newer version than the one available on f-droid

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

It's a fork.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

With a little customization I able to generally get a setup I liked except for a persistent terminal-friendly top row from AnySoftKeyboard (Ctrl, Tab, |, /, Arrows left, up, down, right, Esc). I don’t do too much terminal work, but when you do, it’s so handy—but eventually I noticed how handy it was outside the terminal as feature like Ctrl+V or arrows being faster than using menus or long pressing the screen. Tab is really great for typing accessible code snippets too.

It’s a bit sad the dictionaries are held on a pirvacy-respecting, German nonprofit-held, free software Codeberg repository, but the main repository is tied to the US-based, megacorporate, proprietary repository. Not even a mirror.

The biggest selling point is how unlike AnySoftKeyboard, you don’t need to get an Android+Java environment setup just to add or tweak a new keyboard. Being a JSON file & having many to-JSON options, users are hardly shackled to a specific or difficult-to-work-with option. Even if not perfect, ultimately I might give this a fulltime go when I have time to write out the three language keyboards I need—which is not a phrase I could say about other options since the time to set up for & learn the basics for Android was a task too large.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

This needs more contributors FYI. There's a ton of issues and feature requests

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

dude I've been using it for a couple of days. I absolutely love this. I even found the setting to use an image as a background and it works great! this is my all time use keyboard now. was very happy to get rid of Swiftkey.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Writing with it right now. I think i just disabled gboard for good.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Finally!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

I saw this recommended elsewhere on Lemmyna few days ago and have given it a shot after a month or two trying AnySoftKeyboard - its great.

It may not be as obviously feature laden with additional keyboards etc as ASK but it has much better defaults - all of the extra punctuation is where my fingers just expect it to be after a long time on SwiftKey.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Thanks, this looks great! Just downloaded it and gave it a quick spin.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

There are lots of privacy-friendly keyboards but many only implement English and some very basic features. However, this one does it all.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

I want to love it, but the swipe feature using the external library is OK (worse than Gboard) for English, but horrible for Spanish. I have to correct every other word.

I don't know if it's a library or heliboard issue, but it's a dealbreaker.

Florisboard 0.5 is supposed to release with native functionality, hopefully works better and heliboard can use that too

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

How do you do the multilingual typing? I often switch between my native language and English.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

Disable the "use system language" setting and choose your native language. You can then add English to your native languages layout as a secondary language.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago

Just downloaded! Now I use F Droid and this keyboard! It's pretty neat looking and I like it