for English i use heliboard. but i type in other languages also, and there are no practical choices in foss keyboards for those specific languages which also have the mainstream IME/key layout for my language (not qwerty).
fcitx provides some hope for the future but for now, it also doesn’t have the IME/key layout for my language (only has qwerty). hopefully it can also have handwriting in the future somehow (if only via user-installed model/blob similar to heliboard glide typing).
anyway, I’m on Graphene OS. so i wondered if revoking network permission and setting gboard permanently to incognito (is permanent possible?) would suffice to cut off data collection?
edit: FYI the languages/key layouts i need are Japanese via 12-key flick and Cantonese via traditional Chinese handwriting input
Given GrapheneOS does not have privileged Google Services, revoking network permissions should completely stop any data from leaving GBoard.
On other ROMs with privileged Google Services this might not be the case, altough I don’t expect it.
I’d just as soon not use google apps, where possible.
I think if you have play services installed then apps which want to talk to it still can (even with GrapheneOS sandboxing) even with network permission denied. I believe it’s just how all apps behave (not a special play services privilege), but I can’t remember if I read it on the GrapheneOS FAQ or just in some random comment.
You are 100% correct
In GOS apps in the same profile can have consensual IPC. If Google play is installed in the profile then apps can proxy data through it to Google.
(This is how the google notification framework works for example)