Title.
I’m not sure I’m ready to go all “lineageOS full degoogle” on my phone because some rather necessary day-to-day apps for me will freak out if I have root, let alone a modified OS. Buuuut GBoard has gotten right in my tit, and now they’re offering nightmarish AI generated emoji and I’m like “NO”. So.
I don’t really care about predictive text or swipe-typing or any of that stuff, I mostly just type normally.
The only nice-to-haves that might entice me would be support for one-handed mode and a configurable keyboard layout.
Yes, HeliBoard is an excellent, open source keyboard app.
Heliboard is my main. But I’ve been trying Futo Keyboard and its also very nice.
I’ve been very happy with OpenBoard. Accessing the emoji menu took a little getting used to (you hold down the enter button until it pops up), but it’s great overall.
OpenBoard isn’t updated anymore, use HeliBoard instead (it’s a fork that’s actively maintained). It’s also on F-Droid https://f-droid.org/en/packages/helium314.keyboard/
I’ve struggled with keyboards. Some to try out are OpenBoard, Heliboard, and Florisboard. All are on F-Droid.
But my favourite so far is FUTO Keyboard. Not without issues but I like it the best. It’s not on F-Droid but you can use Obtanium to keep it up to date from the GitHub releases.
If you like weird shit, check out Thumb-key. It’s on F-Droid and made by one of the Lemmy developers.
But my favourite so far is FUTO Keyboard.
Note, that FUTO Keyboard is proprietary, as its code is being distributed under source-available license: https://gitlab.futo.org/keyboard/latinime/-/blob/master/LICENSE.md
OP never asked for OSS 🙂. It’s not big tech and has no network access so should suit the de-google theme.
On FUTO, they are using the term “Source First” (which they invented) because they pretty much think that OSI is funded by big tech and serves their purposes. My exaggerated paraphrasing but you can read their views here.
Basically they think the current model doesn’t work, and they are experimenting with a different take. I don’t have strong views but I’m happily using the keyboard while I wait and see if it works for them.
Futo keyboard isnt on fdroid not happy about that really hope they start publishing it there tho.
FUTO cannot decide to publish on the F-Droid main repository. The F-Droid team compiles all the apps that get published there themselves, so they decide what to publish. Well, and the F-Droid team will not publish FUTO keyboard, because it’s not open-source.
Why would you want a F-Droid-signed app when you can have the app directly from the dev?
