1y ago

What is a good keyboard app for Android?

I've been using SwiftKey for over a decade now, and I didn't really realize how potentially horrible it is for privacy. What are some good alternatives you guys can suggest, ideally open source?

My ideal keyboard includes swipe to type and a notepad (to paste certain emoticons like shrug emoji and such).

Thank you!

Edit, for any future lemmings/internet people who want the definitive answer (so far, as of October '23), OpenBoard works great.

Download the latest release apk from here

And if you want swipe typing as well,

Download the "libjni_latinimegoogle.so" file onto your phone from here

Then when you open OpenBoard, go to Advanced and select "Load gesture typing library". When it asks you to select a file, select the "libjni" file and swiping should work just fine.

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105 comments

AnySoftKeyboard is great.
- I forgot to mention, ASK also has a very wide selection of languages.
- Ive been using this keyboard for around a year now, and compared to Swiftkey and gboard, I absolutely hate anysoftkeyboard with a passion. However, its the best FOSS alternative I've come across.
  Also, my dogs name is Bowie, so whenever I type his name, the keyboard just starts spitting out David Bowie lyrics across the bottom of the keyboard, so thats kinda cool I guess.
- I tried ASK and wasn't a fan. Unless I'm missing customization options, it lacked the ability to change long press times, there's an obnoxious empty space above the keyboard, and it was quite poor at auto correcting words that were supposed to have apostrophes. You'll have to change your bottom row to get the space bar a similar size to Swiftkey (I missed it a fair bit before doing this), and it doesn't have the hold space bar to move cursor either.
  I get that using a different keyboard is going to be an adjustment, being a convert to Colemak, but this one seems just a bit too rough around the edges for me.
  E: found the long press adjustment, but now can't find how to add long press symbols to the keys...maybe I'm just too dumb for this keyboard
  E2: Actually, after more messing with it, I'm going to give it another go. Still missing the long press symbols, autocorrect apostrophes, and auto space placement after adding commas and periods though. We'll see how long I can put up with that.
  
  I'm trying to find the long press adjuster myself, where is it?
  
  UI>Tweaks and more>Tweaks>under behavior tweaks.
  
  I'm not sure ifn you've seen the rest of the thread, but there's a version of OpenBoard that has swipe as well. It's almost exactly the experience I've been looking for. You might like it as well.
  
  Swipe is actually a bit difficult to use with the Colemak layout. With the most common letters all on the home row, much of the swiping just turns into going back and forth on the home row, so you need to be pretty accurate.
  I'll take a look at it though, thanks for the suggestion.
  
  OK. Yep open board seems to address all the issues I had with ASK. I'll definitely give this one a good attempt. Really all my gripes are taken care of, and all in easy to navigate settings. Thanks OP!

105 comments