The only app I can't live without. Except for gboard, all of my applications are Foss. There is no competition for gboard's swipe typing, not to mention its many capabilities like as searching for gifs, stickers, being able to paste copied images, translating, and so on. I'd like to know how I can use gboard while maintaining my privacy. According to what I've heard, it sends all typing data to Google's server. If you ask me, that's a massive no-no. Do you have any suggestions?
Give OpenBoard with gesture typing a shot. No gifs and stuff, but gesture typing works together with suggestions, unlike either base OB or Floris. Someone casually mentioned it a few weeks ago and damn how much my life changed.
I'm glad the word is spreading, i also found out a few weeks ago through Lemmy. The only bug that drives me up the wall is when trying to delete backwards to fix a word. It eventually eats the space to the PREVIOUS word, joining them together and making an even bigger mess. It also looks like it never got an update after September :(
I guess you're using Jerboa? Apparently that's a bug between WebView Webkit and the AOSP keyboard (which OB is based on), or something... I don't quite get what's going on...
Voilà ! My first great piece of advice found on Lemmy! So thankful for this, and for witnessing the sudden growth of a great community here on Lemmy <3
It works like this: your device downloads the current model, improves it by learning from data on your phone, and then summarizes the changes as a small focused update. Only this update to the model is sent to the cloud, using encrypted communication, where it is immediately averaged with other user updates to improve the shared model. All the training data remains on your device, and no individual updates are stored in the cloud.
My main deal breaker with most open source keyboards is the usually pretty bad multi language support. I type in three languages all the time and don't want to have to switch keyboards every time I switch the language. Currently using SwiftKey, just because it handles multi-language (fairly) well.
There is a fork of openboard with multiple language support, but it's missing glide typing. When these two features are merged it's the perfect keyboard. Until then the language switch icon works well enough.
Same. Gboard is the only software keyboard capable of multi-language input that "just works". I tried OpenBoard, AOSP, Floris, Anysoft and while they seem okay in general, none supports polyglots as well as Gboard
If you have Google play services the keyboard could phone home through play services. Shutting off network access isn't 100% effective, especially for Google apps.
Obviously depending on your threat model this is fine.
If you are using Graphene, Play Services are themselves sandboxed and running as a user app with no privileges. I think they really can't be accessed on graphene, unless specifically choosing to.
I believe some custom ROMs use an AOSP version that is very simplified, but it’s not a 1:1 replacement. I’ll be following this to see if anybody has suggestions.
I read through that article, and though I don't have the time or knowledge to properly critique it, I found quite a lot of it unconvincing.
It's one thing to agree there are potential issues, but the article seemed to jump a bit too easily, via rhetoric more than logic, to "therefore it's unsuitable" and similarly to "the other ones are better".
(Disclaimer: I only know mildly what I'm talking about!! If whoever reads this is interested, I hope you can follow the details to their source and get involved in the proper discussion for improving f-droid and/or encouraging another respiratory client.)
To those who have been recommending Florisboard in this thread: Thank you. I've longed for a good FOSS keyboard, but always found they lacked enough features that I was willing to compromise and stick with gboard. Florisboard, using the latest beta from IzzyOnDroid, absolutely hits the mark already. It's missing a few features, like word autosuggest, but I can live without that for a while.
Yesterday I installed Grapheneos so I've swapped to florisboard. Not bad but it's very specific on where you swipe using gestures. I'm slowly getting used to it but gboard was a lot more forgiving.
If you're on GrapheneOS, you get the option to block an app's network access when you install it. So you can use whatever keyboard you want and it can't call home.
Used FlorisBoard for a good while, it's the perfect replacement imo. I don't remember exactly but there was a certain feature missing for me so I uninstalled it but it may have been implemented by now.
What do you mean, no competition? SwiftKey was the first to have swipe typing, and still does it best, because it learns how you swipe and adjusts itself for that.
I loved Swype. Nuance made it a pile of shit though. One annoying thing after they bought it was that 'K.' would always autocorrect to K. d. Lang. You could not tell it to stop doing that.
I use SwiftKey now. Microsoft is getting more of my data.
I don't know how much of a difference it makes in terms of Gboard phoning home, but you can disable a bunch of data sharing options in the Privacy section of Gboard's settings:
Leaving this up because there are some good discussions here already and it's a great question. I'd just flag rule 2 in the sidebar and that we ask questions and recommendation requests to be posted in [email protected] instead. Thanks!
Off topic question, don't you guys think splintering the Android community into multiple communities specifically for certain things when there are so few people on the Lemmy platform will lead to the instance becoming driy without content? Not sure if there's been discussion about this yet.
Lemmy unfortunately doesn't currently have functionality that could help people curate the type of content they want to see from within a single community (e.g., hiding posts, filtering by tags). Maintaining separate communities is more work for the moderators but gives people the choice to decide what kind of content to subscribe to when populating their "Subscribed" view.
Our hope is to foster a space that's scratches the r/android itch with [email protected], while also having a space set aside for questions, support, and seeking recommendations with [email protected]. There's also a tendency toward better quality responses for the latter when it's in a community of people who have deliberately subscribed because they like to help folks out. That's the thinking at least.
A lot oft ROMs allow you go completely disable Internet access for a certain app. Disabling the data collection toggles in GBoard and disabling internet access for GBoard, Play Services, Play Store and the Google App should prevent most logging.
I always see people recommend FlorisBoard, but I haven't been able to leave OpenBoard for it on the basis of never getting autocorrect to work on FlorisBoard. Is that implemented and I'm not setting it up right, or do you all manage to text with 100% accuracy?
Any suggestions on how to bead in on it's connections?
I'd expect it to use some QUIC type protocol reaching out to one of the generic Google shortcutted domains, but that's 100% speculation and 0% testing.
Searching has brought up pcapdroid (it's on fdroid) as a way to watch network traffic from apps via local vpn. I only just installed it myself though so you know as much as I do at this point.
I've been using it for a couple weeks, and it's a lot slower than gboard. No swiping support, suggestions aren't as refined, and basically impossible to use one handed.
For me, I use the clipboard a lot and having to hit that clipboard icon at the top right of the keyboard every time I want to paste something really adds up imo. I wish the last copied string would be in the suggested words bar like other keyboards.
On my old phone i used Florisboard, it was pretty good and it's FOSS as well.
These days I use the samsung keyboard as I recently switched to a samsung device. The keyboard customizations are really awesome, if you have KeysCafe module installed.
Not sure how privacy friendly it is tho.
This is not a direct solution to your question. The only available option currently is Florisboard. I tried it but it didn't work well for me. Ever since I've justbeen using openboard. Clean, fast, pretty accurate but no glide typing. There is an open issue for it and some POC work had been done but not merged into main.
Florisboard is what im currently using and its still missing spelling corrections and suggestions which makes it really hard to reccomend. Besides that i really like it. Make sure you go into the haptic settings and turn off "vibrate motor directly", the system haptics for most devices is much better than the mushy ones enabled by default.
I dropped gboard and started using FlorisBoard. It's a lot more crude and don't have the same features, but I'm very happy with it and will not go back.
I preffer my privacy over features, and using the software and reporting feedback helps it betting better.
Since nobody has suggested it, I'm adding AnySoft Keyboard to the list of alternatives. It takes some time to train custom words but after that it's actually quite nice. Even the swipe typing works quite well.
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.menny.android.anysoftkeyboard/
Many years ago when I was using it heavily, it was extremely good. If I had to estimate, 80 or 90 percent of the time I got the exact word I desired when swiping. Very low rate of having to make corrections.
I don't know when exactly it changed. I think I may have upgraded to a newer phone and despite migrating the data successfully it just didn't "recognize me" anymore. Tried a couple keyboards before settling on Gboard, which was the most consistent (read: least frustrating) at that time, but still noticeably less accurate than Swiftkey.
I generally have automatic updates disabled, so it's entirely possible that a newer version on the old phone would've been bad too, but I don't think I thought of that at the time.
I've been using it for years and I haven't noticed if its gotten any worst.
It did however get bought by Microsoft, so it sends quite a bit of information back to Microsoft, if it is allowed.
I use stock Samsung keyboard and textra for messages. Textra has all the other features you love. Plus it is just a wonderful app that updates often and has SO MUCH customization, if that's your thing. I love it because I can give my boss and coworkers a certain color and then I only rarely text the wrong person.
It's only better for privacy. It's definitely still behind in features.
I'm going to partially take that back. I just realised I hadn't added Florisboard Beta in my Obtainium after switching to a new phone. We now have suggestions! I miss gif searching but, meh, I can live without that.
Edit: well, kinda. There's a PR waiting to introduce "proper" suggestions. Right now in the beta, there's a suggestions panel, but it doesn't appear to be using the dictionary yet.