I’ve been using heliboard for more than a year without any issues. Only think I don’t like is the lack of emoji search(?)
I’ve been down this rabbit hole and here’s the haul from Wonderland:
Conventional:
- Heliboard - Has glide typing, but the available library is unstable and old. The most polished.
- Florisboard - Currently under heavy development, but what’s there is more than usable and very well done.
- Unexpected Keyboard - I actually love this one, but as a Fold user I need some auto correct. Uses swipe motions on each key for symbols and punctuation.
Unconventional:
- Thumbkey - A 3x3 grid using taps and swipes to type. I flip flop between this and Heliboard atm. Has circular motions to input caps or numbers. MASSIVE amount of layouts, including language, programmer, writer and more. Easy layout switch key on the fly.
- Flickboard - Same setup as Thumbkey. This would be my go to ever since they added a landscape layout that smart switches on inner Fold screen, but there’s no separate key height for it, so you have to deal with non-uniform on one screen which isn’t easy to type on. Also has circular motion for caps. No numeric, but there’s the option of having a small number column.
- 8vim - The only one of it’s kind since 8pen died. I’m learning this one and it’s great, but wonky on inner Fold screen. Its hard to explain, but you use circular motions around on X wheel to input whole words at a time letter by letter. Start center, drag out into a quadrant, rotate to get your letter, go back to center, without lifting go to your next quadrant for the next letter. When you’re done and back on center, let go to insert space, or you can move out into a quadrant then lift to end without a space. Takes a lot of getting used to.
U have nerfed my typing speed by 99% with thumb key. Its fun tho
Lol I know the pain. It takes a few days to get to acceptable typing speed, but you can get pretty fast (some report 56 wpm which is pretty good for a virtual keyboard).
Just make sure you know what you want between Thumbkey or Messagease layouts. I started with Messagease layout and it was all good until I spotted some really nice Thumbkey programmer layouts and switched.
Gonna stick with it for a bit, and check the other one out. Some words are already coming out quicker. Thanks for the tips
Do you also know if any of them support multi language spell checking?
Heliboard has multiple dictionary support. Florisboard is still in development for this feature, from what I know. Unexpected Keyboard has none by design, being made for termux and programming.
The unconventional list also has none by design, maybe because there’s less of a chance to fat thumb the keys.
Heliboard would be your winner there, for now.
Thanks, I’ll try it again
EDIT: It works well
Fcitx5 for Chinese, and Flickboard for English. Honestly sad that there isn’t a decent open-source keyboard for Japanese though.
There’s Mozc, but it’s oudated and no one maintain it anymore.
Openboard (fdroid)
Could you specify wether these support physical keyboards? (showing only a toolbar when one is detected). I’m using the default proprietary Kika-keyboard on my device and it’s not great. Microsoft Swiftkey works but is not perfect and not FLOSS.
After trying couple of keybords (mostly AnySoftKeyboard and TypeWise [proprietary]) I have settled on Unexpected Keyboard due to easy switch of keybords to get to japanese keyboard and tts button.
FlorisBoard
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I love it, but it has some fairly big annoying things about it and I’m disappointed to see how little movement there is to fix them in GitHub. The dev seems very insactive.
Damn it’s not FOSS? Time to jump ship
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@freijon the question was specifically about open-source. Is this your first day here?
Anyone, including people who have never been here should be welcomed
@GravitySpoiled Except people who violate the first rule of this community?
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@freijon feel free to learn what “open source” means. Look, considering the number and frequency of posts in this community talking about this issue, you don’t get the benefit of the doubt anymore. People arguing that futo is open source are just spammers. Look around.
No need to be unfriendly. I modified my original comment to make sure everyone understands what they get when they install this keyboard.
Thanks for editing, but I deleted your comment anyway because it was still just recommending something that is not open source.
fyi there is a thread here discussing the moderation of this thread.
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Heliboard which is an active fork of OpenBoard.
I’ve been using Heliboard for a while. It does most that gboard does, but the predictions aren’t as good of course.
Yeah, I’ve been using it for about a year now. It’s a little frustrating that it will learn my misspellings before it suggests a proper replacement, but otherwise I have no complaints. Direct upgrade over the stock AOSP keyboard.
I’ve had the same problem with HeliBoard learning garbage. I just changed my settings though, and I think it should help:
- Open HeliBoard settings
- Open Text correction settings
- Scroll all the way to the bottom, and turn off “Add words to personal dictionary”
If you scroll all the way to the top again, you can manually manage the personal dictionary, including adding words you do want, and deleting any junk that was added by mistake, before switching that setting off.
I use Fcitx5 for its Chinese language support.
Fcitx5 is the best for Chinese. Honestly very impressed that there is a open-source keyboard this good for Chinese. Only thing missing is fat finger error correction (like autocorrect but it works on the preedit text instead of text already output)
I used to use Gboard for Cantonese input. I downloaded fcitx5 reading your comment and tried it for some time. There are some features noticeably missing compared to Gboard.
- top numeric row
- single-hand mode
- simplified and traditional characters selection#
# Found it. It’s in the settings bar at the top of the typing area. Click it open and go deep inside it.
What Gboard and fcitx5 both don’t have for Jyutping input is glide typing. I wish fcitx5 have it because it is really what could make me switch and not look back. Gboard in general has better finger tap detection/correction because duh Google had more data to train on. But I will definitely start using fcitx5 because being open source is sufficient for me to switch.
For languages that isn’t supported by its plugins like Japanese, I have to keep using Gboard though.
Preference for AnySoftKeyboard.
Why is there so many censored posts about keyboard apps?
there is a thread about the moderation of this thread here.
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ive been using heliboard for a while now. no complaints.
Florisboard beta is what I use. Extremely customisable. I think the biggest things that lacks are custom background photo and text-gliding (I ~dont use any of these though).
I made it almost identical to the gboard theme I was using previously and it’s so cool.
Best keyboard so far
Agree.
Wow, I missed the introduction of extensions, thanks! That’s cool
I am a big florisboard fan too, but I can not get autocorrect to work? How did you manage that? Also, I have glide typing, how do you not?
Oh, I don’t use any autocorrect.😅 Does it have one? I know it has autofill, suggestions with dictionaries and spell check, but not sure if it has autocorrect.
I have all of these disabled (I only have the auto-capitalization after a period and auto period after double space).😄
Wait, are you on beta? I think they have gliding, but it is only for gestures, not typing.
I like HeliBoard. It automatically switches between the languages I write in.
How do you make it switch automatically?
I just start writing in the different language and the suggestions + autocorrect switch for me. All the languages (other than Korean) use the same keyboard layout and for the umlauts I need to hold the aoeu shortly to get the right umlaut, or I just rely on the autocorrect.
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Back to heliboard. I found the setting. In the languages selection, it seems it is only a toggle and to get the menu you need to long press. That needs to be fixed and put the multi language option outside.
Yeah heliboard is the only one I’ve found that is actually usable on a day to day. Just wish the autocorrect was better, other than that no complaints.
How do you set it up to do that? I just discovered multilingual typing, but that does not seem to be quite it.
I installed the dictionaries I need and then followed https://github.com/Helium314/HeliBoard/wiki/FAQ#multilingual-typing-type-in-multiple-languages-without-switching-manually
Okay, thanks. The switching between languages is not perfect yet, but works okay. I regularly get suggestions for another language than I am currently typing.
