this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2024
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I'm sick of random capitalisations mid sentence. I'm sick of common words being replaced by less common ones or even downright nonsense. I'm sick of it taking three attempts to successfully get the word I want. I swear it's been like this for five years or more. Can we have a better version yet, or at least the old one back?

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (5 children)

If and of, in and on, so and no, these words keep getting corrected for eachother when it shouldn't. I've tried resetting auto correct to make sure I didn't teach it to do that.

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[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago

SwiftKey is dope

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago

T9 text worked wonderfully, and it's only gotten worse from there.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Now that I think about it. Autocorrect sucks! It was made to make up for the inferiority of an onscreen keyboard (which I do prefer for this obvious reasons).

When I type on a computer keyboard, after a paragraph or a few sentences, I check if any words has a red underline and that kind of makes me proof read things as I type.

Autocorrect does the opposite, it “fixes” things you type so when you look back it’s fire and you press send.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Even though gboard is a google product and probably sends a ton of data, the autocorrect has never been an issue for me personally. I can type much faster because it will always autocorrect to what I intend.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Oh how I wish the same was true for languages other than English too… autocorrect has always been borderline unusable with my (granted, smaller) language, and this is true for all of the applications of autocorrect, be it android or iOS or whatever.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

If it has the word auto in it i tend to disable, remove or uninstall it. I get frustrated by every half baked implemenation to predict, correct or actson my behalf.

The only thing i mostly tolerate is auto suggest in programming IDEs. But that is on thin ice. The second it hijacks the input system its done.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

You mean autocorrect and voice to text stuff and not AI, right? Because this is one area I find the AI to actually be good at while the non-AI versions are just garbage.

Predictive typing/autocorrect has a nasty habit of changing correct words to entirely different words that do not in any way fit with the context. And I know they look at context, since it will sometimes change a word I wrote 4 words ago when I no longer even notice because I'm looking where I am writing and not 4 words ago.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I despise autocorrect. Haven't used it in 10 years probably. Just a normal keyboard for me please

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (3 children)

I don't know about you, but I just swiped my way through the first sentence off this reply with Google's keyboard and all I had to do was select swiped instead of the suggested settled.

They do remember common words that you use, so if you have accidentally "approved" a few misspellings they'll be suggested/given to you more often so a drastic solution to that is to clear your personalised data from the keyboard.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

They do remember common words that you use

Sometimes your own peril... I keep getting my ex's name randomly when I'm swiping for another word 🤦‍♂️

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

You can always hold and remove any suggestion, be it a typo or an ex's name.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I've switched to Gboard on Android back in the days, when it was the only one with proper multilingual features, and been using it ever since.

I've experienced the opposite: I actually found it rather more helpful than not, despite the occasional errors like you mentioned. But nowadays it's quite rare that it "mispredicts" a word. And what I've found extremely helpful is, that nowadays it doesn't only correct individual words, but it picks up other grammatical errors as well in the sentence. So it's working for me.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I've only ever used Gboard and I even turned off the predictive text and autocorrection features in the settings but it still changes words on me often.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Ayo, whatever has been making recommendations for my next few terms in Visual Studio can go straight onto my phone, that shit is accurate 90% of the time it’s sometimes a wee bit concerning

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I sideloaded HeliBoard on Android via F-Droid and the predictive text is coming along nicely the more I type.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

Hmmm, wonder why it needs side loaded? Why can they post to the Google store?

Edit: just installed it and f-droid, though. Super easy.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Let me know what you think about it. I also loaded the swipe gesture pack and it is super responsive

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

I turned it off a long time ago when it started replacing entire sentences. So annoying!!

I still have the suggestions on but I might turn that off too because it keeps suggesting words in other languages even though I'm on the English keyboard and don't know much in any other language (and the only other keyboard I have is the Spanish one).

Also the dictionary doesn't have a shit ton of common words in it for some reason, so if I can't think of the proper spelling I have to look it up anyway. Which is also annoying because search engines suck and I never have a hard copy handy.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 6 months ago

I think the major problem is that culture is evolving so rapidly that keyboard dictionaries can't keep up with new words.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Or how about with apple, when it autocorrects a word, and you want to manually click to the middle of the word, or even to the beginning or end, it fuckin highlights the word endlessly. That’s one of the most frustrating for me.

I’ve Al’s it entirely stopped using swype because it’s so dogshit now. I used to love it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

This sounds like user error to me. Hold the spacebar, then drag your thumb to move the cursor exactly where you want it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Fully aware of that function. As I said elsewhere, it just doesn’t come naturally to me to do that. It’s like using the arrows on a keyboard to move the cursor through text. It works, but I just use the mouse and click where I want to edit. If using the mouse didn’t work in certain instances, I’d have the same complaint. I want to click where I want, when I want. Not use a function I don’t naturally use when the computer forces me to. See what I’m saying? Doesn’t change the problem that there’s a workaround. It shouldn’t need a workaround for a super basic, incredibly common function.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

Actually using the arrows along with ctrl and shift is much faster than taking your hands off the keyboard and using the mouse. Would recommend

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Swype typing still working awesome for me on Gboard.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

What’s Gboard?

Edit: ugh, it’s google? That it’s own problem I’d like to avoid

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

HTC had one of the best keyboards. Each key had 2 letters on each key (except 1 or 2 that had 3) and it never failed to guess what word I wanted. Stopped working with android 4 IIRC.

Found it on a XDA thread from 2010

Sadly still doesn't work

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I switched from Android to iPhone after they stopped making phones with QWERTY physics keyboards. I tried my partner’s iPhone and the screen typing was actually excellent. Now with HUGE version iPhones, it’s wayyyy easier for me.

I’m sure on-screen Android keyboards are VASTLY improved since then, but I don’t have any problems day-to-day shitposting all day

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

My transition from OnePlus 6T -> iPhone 12 Pro Max -> OnePlus 12 was the same, both times.

iPhone had really good type and haptics and predictive entry around that time...but over time I started to find it annoying. More and more often it would insist that the word I correctly entered 2-3 times is actually wrong.

I'm really happy with the keyboard on my new phone. Haptics are better, hit boxes are better, autocorrect is (generally) better, and it's pretty good about learning new words or fixing between its and it's and such.

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