FUTO Keyboard - Offline, privacy respecting, and speech to text

keyboard.futo.org FUTO Keyboard

Privacy @lemmy.world

FUTO Keyboard

keyboard.futo.org

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Switched to this a couple weeks ago. I'm used to swipe typing on gboard. Unfortunately the swipe typing on FUTO is nowhere near useable for me yet. The accuracy is horrendous, and much of the time it just gives up on inputting any word at all.
Unfortunately swiping on Gboard has been my main method of typing for more than a decade. I'm so accustomed to it that I can type full sentences without even looking at my phone.
So in an effort to improve my privacy (by discontinuing my use of a piece of keylogging spyware as a keyboard) I've sacrificed the speed of swipe typing. Everything takes much longer to type now. Worth it? I guess I'll keep trying for a month or so and decide then.
- Have you tried Heliboard? It's open and has swyping (you have to download a binary blob).
  
  Yeah I tried swipe typing on FUTO keyboard too and was very disappointed, went back to the absolutely stellar Heliboard. It's definitely as good as Apple's swipe typing, especially after a few weeks of use.
  To be fair the FUTO keyboard is still in Alpha and they plan to improve this specifically. I'll keep an eye on it as it matures.
  
  I use heliboard with futo for voice to text. Works pretty well. Best voice to text one used. Picks up on proper punctuation without having to say it.
  
  Where do you get the blob?
- Just FYI you can use a firewall app on device to block Gboard internet access.
  
  It can communicate via play services if you have that
- Agreed. From what I can tell the swiping is inaccurate as you have to touch each letter perfectly for it to register where as on gboard being near to or adjacent to a letter is sufficient for it to guess the correct word

The speech to text is too slow for me, especially if you use 4 languages like me.
In the end I switched to HeliBoard, there I can type those 4 languages without changing the keyboard.
- Could you tell which 4 languages you use? I am sure it would include Japanese.
  
  I use Genman, Swedish, Polish and English. And then I have to switch to Korean to a seperate one because it's a very different Keyboard. I guess you would have the same problem with Japanese because it doesn't use the latin characters either.
- I just set it up following your comment but I cannot figure out how to set it up in order to type in different languages without changing keyboards.
  
  Did you check the FAQ https://github.com/Helium314/HeliBoard?tab=readme-ov-file#faq--common-issues I think there the most things explained. It's a long time ago I did it so I don't quite remember either.
  
  Go to Languages and Layouts, select your language, then add the additional languages to Multilingual Typing.

I had switched to HeliBoard in order to de-Google as much as possible. I'm not militant about it, but if there's an alternative I'll take it.
Decided to try out FUTO because I felt like I was missing swipe typing. And it's good. But for me it's just too much. It turns out I didn't really miss swipe typing, and (possibly just a me issue) that extra feature was making FUTO much less responsive than Heliboard. So back I went.
I guess for me, simple and fast is more important than replicating my old Gboard experience. But each person is different.
- Heliboard has swipe typing? Just go to the settings and tap on "Gesture Typing". I believe you have to download a proprietary library for it, though.
- You can add swipe (glide?) typing into HeliBoard. From their github readme:
  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 (click on the file and then "raw" or the tiny download button)
  
  The only reason HeliBoard doesn't include this themselves is presumably legal liability plus their dedication to the app not having any network permissions at all.
- I've had no responsive issues with FUTO so far, just the occasional typo from the ever so slightly different layout.
- Just learned about heliboard. Thank you! Wrote this with that keyboard and glide enabled as the others have said. Loving it!

FUTO is the greatest use of on-device LLM so far. It never gets anything wrong, even my thought markers "..."
- Ya I'm using the English 79 model (not the default) voice on a pixel 8 and it works very well.

Whats the general opinion about AnySoftKeyboard?
- I've tried it, and it's quite good and heavily customisable, but a pain in the arse if you want to use more than one language. I think their Dutch version doesn't even work if I recall correctly.

I though it was against the rules to post about proprietary software
- https://gitlab.futo.org/keyboard/latinime
  Debatable how "proprietary" it really is.
  
  It isn't foss so it is a toss. You can't do much with the source code. It is the same as the Windows XP source code

Checking this out now! So far I like it. Only think I lose from using Gboard is the access to gifs, but I can work around that.
- Privacy wise you should really have internet disabled for Gboard anyways which already disables the gif functionality.

Any idea what languages this keyboard support? I can't use any open source keyboard yet as all doesn't have good multi lingual support and typing.
- Have you tried HeliBoard? I think it has the best multilingual support for all these FOSS keyboards, but mind you, you have to manually load the dictionaries for the languages you want, and same thing for the swipe libraries, but it's all documented and linked on the GitHub page.
- You have to configure the space bar to allow a long-press to give you a popup menu to select another language. Currently there's no way to have multiple languages with the same layout, it's annoying but you can work with it.
- It has alot of languages. Depending on what your looking for the voice is good the options are nice. Pair it with openboard and its a gem.

Just donated last night. I've been using this keyboard for the past month. I switched over from gboard. While I've never really used speech to text I'm just glad that this keyboard is so privacy focused. You can swap out the llms too if it fits your style

I use a FUTO voice and Helio keyboard combo by just calling FUTO from Helio when I want to dictate. Works great for me. I tried the FUTO keyboard and it works well enough but not quite as well as Helio for me. Still contribute money, though, because I like where they are headed.

Gonna give it a shot. Can't be any worse than the default Android Keeb
- It's good. I use it. Whoever made it did a great job.
- It's fairly good. I find the autocorrect to be poor and result in a much lower typing speed though.

I love Heliboard, but this is already giving me much better autocorrect, I'm not finding myself actively avoiding typing from my phone now, so it's a win to me

Switched after Louis' video about it. Haven't tried the voice yet, but just having swipe typing and suggestions again is a definite improvement.

I like the idea of the keyboard being offline and the LLM stuff but so far I can't see a way for multi language input. I'm guessing it's too early in the alpha state for that but I will keep an eye open for it, it is a promising project. In the meantime I'll test the heliboard others were mentioning.
- No keyboard besides SwiftKey and gboard have accented characters for devanagari script.
  Every opensource one is a dealbreaker, and i dont know how to fix it myself.

Tried it, Heliboard combined with FUTO Voice is much, much better.

I haven't ventured past the stock keyboard in a long while. What's the status on swipe typing on foss android keyboards? I want to switch away from the stock oem keyboard app
- What's the status on swipe typing on foss android keyboards?
  Some have it, some don't. Idk why but I heard the swipe functionality relies on some kind of Google library that you can install manually on some FOSS keyboards if they don't have the feature. Idk if it's safe for privacy though. I never learned swipe keyboards anyways so here I'm on the "just don't use it" side :) (jk)
  
  FUTO is the only one to my knowledge that doesn't rely on the Google library but it also isn't as good.

52 comments