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At the moment I don't use any keyboard app. I haven't found any that I really like. I used to use gboard which was nice before I became privacy concious and realised gboard could be tracking every key press I make.
If I am going to use a keyboard app I wouldn't use anything unless it is FOSS software.
Heliboard has a clipboard and a lot of other useful stuff.
I am currently using FUTO keyboard.
3 that I use for different purposes. Gboard is my default.
Then I have Keepass2android for when dealing with passwords.
Finally I have Irregular Expressions for DoInG👏🅂🅃🅄🄿🄸🄳 ̶k̶̶e̶̶y̶̶b̶̶o̶̶a̶̶r̶̶d̶̶ 𝖘𝖙𝖚𝖋𝖋
.ɐᴉlɐɹʇsn∀ uᴉ ʞɔɐq ʎlᴉɯɐɟ ʎɯ oʇ ƃuᴉʞlɐʇ uǝɥʍ ɹo
OpenBoard. FOSS. No predictions or swiping though.
Thumbkey.
Oh boy, where do I start. FOSS mostly
FUTO keyboard. It has the best swipe-typing and voice to text out of all source-viewable ones. (Not fully open source due to the license)
For reference, here is the license. I'm curious which part makes it "not fully open source".
First realize what is being talked about is the generally agreed upon open source definition https://opensource.org/osd
While it seems they have simplified the license removing some reasons it's not to be considered open source, it's still restricting commercial uses in the following two restrictions:
"You may distribute the software or provide it to others only if you do so free of charge for non-commercial purposes.
Notwithstanding the above, you may not remove or obscure any functionality in the software related to payment to the Licensor in any copy you distribute to others."
In short open source would only require the software be distributed with source under the same licensed as recieved, thus can't restrict it to non-commercial, nor prevent the changing of payment details.
Obviously it's a reasonably permissive license, and possibly won't impact you from using it as an end user. It's just has some restrictions for the creators to request payment, and to prevent third parties profiting off the product. Think Creative Commons, share alike, non-commercial for software. (While most will consider this fair its not quite fully open)
One reason they went this route was to prevent third parties form distributing their software with ads and using it in systems they are actively attempting to provide alternatives for (ie software that may spy on your system useage/and call home) the non-commercial clause has more teeth than say MIT where it would be relicensed, or GPL that while the software source would need to be provided might still be embedded in a ecosystem.
You have to be able to redistribute commercially, but the FUTO license only allows non-commercially.
This has no effect on us users so it is essentially just as good as open source, but technically it is not open source.
Florisboard but it may or may not have your language.
I think it is configured so that you can add languages tho
I use SwiftKey and switch off the app access to the Internet.
Also trying out FUTO keyboard. Seems pretty good.
I use Gboard and I absolutely loathe it. It constantly suggests words that are not words, and if I remove them, they don't actually get removed. I'm constantly minimizing the keyboard or recording audio and I have no clue how. I have yet to find anything better
I use Gboard because of it's customizability. I like adding words to the dictionary to make it easier to type usernames. Gboard lets you pin things so you can save for more than one hour. Never copy OTPs, always type them manually.
I only use FOSS ones. I hop between florisboard and unexpected keyboard, and I gave heliboard a shot again recently because it has the swipe/glide typing but I couldn't stick with it because I was missing other features, so I'm back on floris.
Since I only use open source keyboards, I'm not really concerned about privacy...so no blocking of internet access.
I also thought about trying out the clipboard history, and also am wondering if it's safe...
If you want to try FOSS keyboard again, HeliBoard is your best bet.
Florisboard looks nice - I'm using Unexpected myself due to customizability but Floris seems plenty customizable while being a little nicer and simpler. Will have to test it a bit
Thank you.
Will look into Heliboard. Does it have a Handwriting mode?
I have Heliboard and it works great.
Not sure if it's different but I use swipe on it and I love it.
Unfortunately no.
I don't think there is a FOSS one that supports it.
I use HeliBoard because I have to switch between 5 languages (German, Polish, English, Swedish and Korean) constantly and it does it for the most part (other than the korean) automatically for me.
I didn't think of clipboard history yet, but I know that Keepass2Android deletes the copied passwords after a while, that's kind of good enough for me.
It seems with Heliboard you have to switch between languages rather than having it detected automatically. It also doesn't support swiping so not really a replacement for Swiftkey yet, for me at least.
You set up which languages you want to have there and then it switches between them when you just start writing automatically.
It automatically switches languages on Duolingo for me.
I just use defaults.
Because the idea is, if my phone's manfacturer wanted to spy on me, they could do so regardless of what keyboard I use.
I use a samsung phone so its just the samsung default keyboard. I do go to settjngs and turn off any telemetry stuff and just have to hope they aren't lying when I turn off telemetry stuff.
I do use clipboard history, but if I ever copy a password or some sensitive data, I have an app that I can use afterwards that overwrites the clipboard data with random data.
But most of the time, never really need to copy passwords since I use bitwarden and it directly inputs passwords, bypassing the clipboard history completely.
Also OTPs are one time only so doesn't really matter if they get leaked.
Thank you.
Because the idea is, if my phone's manfacturer wanted to spy on me, they could do so regardless of what keyboard I use
I use a Chinese smartphone. And use GBoard on it.
I turn off the telemetry stuff too.
My concern was me enabling clipboard history maybe taken as consent to send it to some online server for sync/backup or later use.
Wanted to know what other people were doing about such risks.
App to overwrite clipboard
Cool. What is that?
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.paranoiaworks.unicus.android.sse/
Its main function is not the clipboard cleaner, but its an open source app for encrypting files/folders or just text. The text encryption is quite interesting, since unlike a txt file, you can send encrypted ciphertext over sms messaging. There's also a way to hide a string of text in a photo. It's just a cool app I just kinda have on my phone, but I found the overwrite clipboard function be quite useful on its own. Its under "Other Utilities">"Clipboard Cleaner"
Thank you
Microsoft Swiftkey no matter what mobile device I’m on (iOS or android). It has a very forgiving autocorrect and great memory. It’s super crashy whenever a new iOS update comes along. But they fix it real fast.
I bought it before it was Microsoft, great kb.