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1y ago

Preparing a megathread about android FOSS apps - Part Four (Keyboards, Notes, Maps and Music Players)

This thread is ONLY to talk about Keyboards, Notes, Maps and Music Players. I add video Music Players because probably some people want to know about good FOSS alternatives.

Little context

Please, consider share your ideas and thoughts about apps on previous threads. Your opinions are really important to build final megathread. You can upvote or downvote posts so that comments gain strength and agreement between the community.

90 comments

I yearn for the day a FOSS keyboard for Android will have functional multilingual autocorrect. Most of the typing I do on my phone is in Frenglish and every FOSS keyboard I've tried has made it impossible to have autocorrect turned on. They always default to autocorrecting in either only English or only French which is just very frustrating.
Compare that to SwiftKey, which not only has no issues with mixed languages, also learns my texting patterns, such as typing j'fais rather than je fais. I just don't give it any permissions, including network access. It's one of the only proprietary things on my phone but I couldn't use my phone without it.
- Have you tried this active fork of OpenBoard? The dev added support for multilingual typing months ago. This has Material You theme as well as glide typing (needs to be turned on manually).
  
  Really happy with this fork, using it for several months now. Also occasionally Unexpected Keyboard for termux / ssh / code ....
  
  Wow thanks, exactly what I've been looking for!
  Edit: was using swype which was last updated in 2018 and is broken with android 14. Been looking for a replacement for ages. This open board fork is the best replacement I've tried so far. The word prediction works differently but I'll get used to it.
  
  ~~I've just installed it and it appears that you still have to manually switch between languages, otherwise it won't correct your attempts to write in another language.~~
  edit: looks like you need to press on your preferred dictionary and add multilingual typing for it to work. it's quite decent, especially when you set autocorrect to "very aggressive", otherwise it will have difficulties recognising when you're trying to type in the secondary language.
  
  I was honestly hoping for a reply like this when I commented. I'll give it a try, thanks! 😊 I'd love to ditch SwiftKey.
  Edit: So far, it's the by far best FOSS option I've tried. There's even a couple of things it does much better than SwiftKey IMO (although I do wish there were an option to make the keyboard a bit smaller, it feels massive!) I'll stick with it for 2-3 weeks to try and train its auto-correct to my liking.
  
  Very impressed with the number of issues that have been opened in just the last few months. It's clear there is a lot of interests in a FOSS keyboard. There are requests for gifs in there as well. Also the multiple pull requests from different contributors are promising.
  Unfortunately I, like many other, probably do like 30℅ of my communication via gifs so it's realm hard to go without regardless of how much I want to use a FOSS app.
- I hate how good SwiftKey's autocorrect is. I'm definitely on the hunt for a good alternative in this thread.
  
  I've been using the OpenBoard fork since it got recommended in this thread and it's been good enough for me to disable SwiftKey (not delete yet though, I'm not ready to fully commit to deleting that accrued personal dictionary). I recommend checking it out!
- AnySoftKeyboard lets you merge dictionaries when you long press the Enter button. I've been using it for multilingual autocorrect for a few years now.
  
  I've tried AnySoftKeyboard and that was not my experience. It worked fine if I only wrote out sentences that were fully in one language or the other, but as soon as I tried to switch mid-sentence it became completely borked.
  I've been using the OpenBoard fork that was recommended in this thread for the past few days, and it's been lovely.

Hopefully I'm not too late. This is the first of your posts that I see.
It is always a great idea to list awesome opensource apps. And most importantly keep the list up to date.
This should not be a one person task and keeping a megathread up to date and readable isn't that great.
There are "awesome lists". Anyone can create an awesome list. It is a curated list of apps or services, often maintained on github for easier collaboration.
Following are two of those
https://github.com/binaryshrey/Awesome-Android-Open-Source-Projects
https://github.com/LinuxCafeFederation/awesome-android
Privacyguides should always get a mention when talking about recommendations since they curate their list and state why they choose this or that app and service. Its primary target is privacy but opensource is important for that as well https://www.privacyguides.org/
In short, if you are serious about it, create a repo somewhere and begin writing and listing. Or, contribute to other lists.
- Privacyguides should always get a mention when talking about recommendations
  I disagree - privacy guides isn't a software freedom organization and the privacy community is not the free software community (although there is significant overlap). Conflating the two harms both.
  
  Their list is very well curated.
  With what statement of them would you disagree? They may be a little bit too strict with security but they usually educate and for that it's a good resource
- I build this to see opinions from all Lemmys who want contribute. My goal is catch all opinions from these threads and built a reliable megathread with Lemmys opinions. Something like on final, to people see on overall, what we think as a community about the best FOSS apps.
  I know are a lot of lists on the internet with good apps ideas, but im more focus with all Lemmys opinions, the opinions off user-use. This is my main goal. Built something reliable from Lemmy communities.
  EDIT: I appreciate if you want contribute with your apps you are using and you like it, on respectively threads (:
  EDIT 2: I want to keep the megathread update. I see your comment has been upvote and sometimes I think if this is a relly be a good idea (?) tbh. I want will update megathread atleast 3 times per year when it is final, and discussing with people some aspects to update or change.

I'm extremely picky about Notes apps. I've tested so many Open source as well as closed source apps. I'll be interested in what others are using, but the features I want are:
Cross platform (Android, Linux, and MacOS)
Universal format - markdown is a bonus
Good task handling with checklist support
So what I've settled with is Obsidian (not open source) due to its simplicity of reading and writing to a folder hierarchy of plain text files. But since it sucks at task and checklists, I've been using Quillpad. It only syncs with Nextcloud at the moment, but there is promise of plain text file and bring-your-own-sync-solution on the roadmap.
Notesnook is a nice app, but since it's all E2EE, there is no plain text without exporting your notes manually. Shame too because it handles tasks and checklists very nicely.
Honorable mention: Acreom it's not open source yet, but that is on the roadmap. It is local first and plain text files on desktop OSes...but not on Android, meaning of you want to sync between your desktop and mobile you have to use their cloud. And I don't want to do that.
Joplin gets mentioned constantly. But it adds weird metadata to every text file and changes the titles of the files to some garbled hexadecimal string, which makes it impossible to know what you're looking at at the file level. And the task management/checklists is awful. Android app is bad too. I'm sure I'll get hate for hating on the FOSS golden child, but that's ok. This is simply my opinion. Like I said I'm very picky.
- I haven't used it, but I've heard logseq is pretty much FOSS obsidian.
  
  It is very close. But it has more of a day view/outline focused approach which clashes with the way my brain wants to work. And seemingly, you can't change that in the settings or with plugins.
- @Father_Redbeard@lemmy.ml it is really hard to find the perfect Notes app. I've tried a bunch and settled on Quillpad, synced with Nextcloud.
  @dez@lemmy.ml
  
  I do like Quillpad quite a bit. It's the best Google Keep replacement out there at the moment. I would rather it not be tied to Nextcloud, and supposedly that is eventually coming. But for now I'm using it daily alongside Obsidian.
- thoughts on markor? also, what do you mean acreom plans open source? what license?
  
  I keep trying Markor. UI is rough though. And not a fan of the checklist and task management within the app. I do like that it's just simple text files for sure. But not a very elegant solution.
  Not sure what license Acreom is going to open source if under. But it's on their Roadmap

Notes: Joplin
Maps: OSMand, Organic Maps, StreetComplete, Vespucci, EveryDoor
Music: VLC

Notally it's been my main one for writing things when I need. Imo, is really really good and simple.
As someone suggest me here on Lemmy, the keyboard im using is OpenBoard from Helium314 github page.
About Music Players, I used Auxio and Metro (a fork from Retro MusicPlayer) and liked it.
- Auxio is excellent and use Material design.

Maps: Organic Maps
Notes: Note calendar. Type in notes for a specific day. A beautifully simple app.

Notes:
Logseq
Music (Local Mp3 apps)
Vinyl Music Player
Metro Music Player

I've enjoyed anysoft and floris keyboards but I want something open source with gif support. Might go back to swiftkey just because of it.
- I'm physically addicted to SwiftKey and it's still very good, but, it is owned by Microsoft now in case that influences anyone's decisions here.

Keyboard: OpenBoard
Notes: Quillpad
Music: Symphony
Maps: OsmAnd~

Openboard
Quillnote
Organic Maps
ViMusic - music streaming but after 1st listen songs are cached for offline play.
Edit: Now that I think about it, I use session for taking notes and "syncing" them with my PC. I guess any messaging app with a desktop client would work.
- Quillnote has been abandoned. Quillpad is the fork that has a somewhat active development, if that matters to you.
  
  quillpad has no way of exporting notes as of yet, be warned.
  
  Why is it bad that it's been abandoned? It works fine for me. Are there security concerns or something?
- RiMusic is a fork with updates

For notes I really like Quillnotes.
- Quillnotes is dead But Quillpad is a fork of it
- get quillpad, and then use obtainium

For notes I'm using Joplin with sync with desktop client through a nextcloud instance. Really a very nice app if you want sync with multiple devices anc user friendly interface.
For maps OsmAnd, I even pay a subscription to support the project (and have hourly updated maps which is pretty cool when I fix wood paths in openstreetmap).

I'm using "Unexpected Keyboard" right now. I like that it's different in that I dont have to long press a key in order to input punctuation. It's a swipe from the center of a key to a corner and I think it's that little bit faster. :)
Also doesn't have auto-correct like other FOSS keyboards.

##Keyboards
Florisboard is back!
Openboard is sadly outdated, but there was some steady updated fork
Simple keyboard (NOT the simple tools), but it doesn't have many fucntions, but works just great and looks on a million $
##Notes
Many good options, but i would like to see an gpg encrypted notes with local storage
Honorable mentions: logseq, simple notes
Maps
Gmaps WV (donate to divest, plz), organic maps
##Music
Everything that works with jellyfin, bauh was good, but not updated in a while
- According to fdroid, florisboard is in beta, but hasn't been updated since june, 2022. Is it still active?
  
  As I said, it's back, check github

Keyboard: FlorisBoard
Music Player: InnerTune
- Is there a way to get autocorrect on Florisboard?
  
  Waiting. They're programming the thing.
- I like FlorisBoard, but for some reason I cannot make the chinese input to work. Typing in 拼音 just doesn't give any results. Maybe I'm just setting it up wrong tho

Keyboard: OpenBoard (works great, support anonymous mode, my layout, emojis, paste, move cursor using finger over space button, longer deletes using finger over backspace)
Music Player: Odyssey (I don't rely on ID3 tags but directory structure instead - there is too little of those players who use it)
Music Player: ViMusic (FOSS interface to Youtube Music)
Music Player: RadioDroid (for online radio stations)
- RiMusic is a maintained fork of ViMusic
  
  I actually have both and experiment with RiMusic. But it seemed less stable for me. Still trying though.

OINotepad lost the ability to export notes to a file.
What is another notes app that is single press to start a new note, after app opening. Has no-nag auto-save if app is closed halfway through writing a note. Can auto title the note with the first line of the note. Can export all notes to a clear-readable file. Has search within a single note. And can sort by most recently modified.
Prefer on fdroid, but open to any FLOSS solution(on obtanium etc.)
OINotepad covered all this. Standard notes comes close but I can't search within an individual note.
Please help. (c:
- Notesnook?
  It has a premium tier with some features locked behind that, so try the freebie first to see if it's what you want. But I think if covers all those bases. It's other selling point is encryption, security, and privacy. So by default it'll prompt for biometrics or password to open the app. You can turn off a bunch of that if it ends up being too much friction for the quick note taking you're insinuating.
  
  Hey! Thanks for the suggestion. That one is not in the 15 I have tried, I'll check it out.
  
  UPDATE: So I tried a whole bunch more note apps, and settled on
  NeutriNote CE
  It covers all the functionality I need, and is powerful with plenty of features if required.
  Thanks for the other suggestion too.

Does anyone know of an alternative to Hacker's Keyboard? It hasn't been updated for about 5 years and I'm worried it will stop working on newer versions of Android.
- Maybe: unexpected keyboard
  
  Had a look at it, seems to lack dedicated modifier and cursor keys. Looking specifically for a PC-style keyboard.

I quite like unexpected keyboard and I don't do much note-taking but when I do I just type it in acode and a save it as a .md.

I use Simple Keyboard and sometime Fboard.
And to play music I use RiMusic and also used Retro Music in past.
And NotiNotes for notes. A notes app which lives in notification.
- why retro and not metro?
  
  Didn't know about it.

Muaic: InnerTune (F-Droid), Deezloader to get mp3s (apk)

music player: auxio or symphony
auxio is more simple but has less features. symphony is the inverse. pick your poison

my fav music player is sicmu playr cuz it handles large music collections very well !!

Fcitx5 supports CJK

noteless . esp for collecting links/bookmarks

Music player: "dialog music player" for filemanagers, Vanilla music if you want auto-play, anrimians player is nice too (github)
maps: nothing beats OSMAnd
Notes: personally markor, but if you want cross platform sync Standard Notes may be nice
Keyboard: Florisboard forever, so stable and customizable. I cant like without the internal clipboard and quick deletion, and the editing buttons

Music player: Metro
Maps: Organic Maps
Notes: Notally

Wildcard for keyboard: ThumbKey
This has been pretty great, although unique.

Joplin
I sync it with onedrive basically for free between my phone, laptop and computer. It's wysiwyg editor means it was basically a drop in replacement for EverNote for me, but open source and without the costs.

What's the best alternative to Gboard?
I've gotten use to swiping to type, and the English (Australia) (PC) QWERTY layout with the number row at the top, and hold-press numbers are the equivalent QWERTY keyboard symbols.
Am finding it hard to replace.

I've been using Minuum for years despite it being long abandoned by its closed source devs. Fans of this very unique keyboard would love to have an OSS alternative!
- @SirKevin @dez there's dozens of us!

Notes:
I don't like that most notes apps don't let you access to your files, relying instead in cloud synching. One of the few that gives you full control is https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.gsantner.markor/
It let you chose a folder where to save your notes and can manage many types of files (markdown, txt, todo, csv, etc)
I like saving my notes on my SD card, I created different folders to work as notebooks, so for example, I have a folder named "comments" where I edit my comments before posting, one for lists, one for lyrics of songs I like and I'm thinking about making one for cooking recipes.
Music:
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.poupa.vinylmusicplayer/
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/player.phonograph.plus
and https://f-droid.org/en/packages/ch.blinkenlights.android.vanilla
Are the best for offline experience. I really like vinyl's and phonograph's plus UI, simple, yet powerful. Both supports lyrics, metadata editing and at least vinyl can connect to the internet to grab artist picture and bio which can be displayed offline, I'm not sure if phonograph can since it's main focus is privacy and to work fully offline.
The issue i have with both is that they don't work properly on my Samsung tab, I think is the awful Samsung bloatware that makes them stop, and not make full use of all their features.
Vanilla UI isn't the best looking but it has many features when combined with the extensions. The best Foss metadata fetcher and editor. The problem the app have is that it isn't update frequently, and at the moment it has a problem with the notifications. There's already a PR opened in github, so hopefully this get fixed soon.
Keyboard
I'm currently using 2 keyboard apps https://github.com/Helium314/openboard as my main and https://f-droid.org/en/packages/rkr.simplekeyboard.inputmethod When I'm tire of the autocorrector changing what I write. I know I can disable it on openboard, but most of the times I actually use it and simple board is just more fluid.

Keyboard: AnySoftKeyboard and Unexpected Keyboard
Notes: Joplin

For music, I use FinAmp. Basically have self-host JellyFin and can stream the music over LAN w/o using storage, or download it to my phone for offline listening

Ty everybody for all comments!
And being anoying again (sorry about that), if you can share your apps ideas on previously threads (they are on this main post), I appreciate :)

Hacker's Keyboard is the only keyboard app I'll accept on Android.

90 comments