Ask Lemmy

Thank you for this (repeated) question! I will try some of these and collate my experiences.

• SwiftKey

Long-time fan, in spite of privacy concerns. My bar for comparing everything below.

• FUTO

First install, looks promising.

Indeed very customisable. What I don't like is the (imho) far inferior swipe typing and the need to explicitly switch languages for the keyboard to use the appropriate dictionary. Also, I miss directional buttons for those single-character position adjustments (Futo only offers space-key swiping). Voice typing seems highlighted but I find it to be unbearably slow.

Verdict: will most likely uninstall again.

• OpenBoard

Installation somehow defaulted to "English (Australia)", but no biggie.

Seems very customisable also, but lacks swipe typing (a deal beaker for me). Relies on the OS language (actually, keyboard) switcher and curiously lacks a shortcut to its settings (requiring the user to go so the rest through the Settings app (which, best-case, is a whopping 5 taps).

Verdict: privacy aside, cannot compete with SwiftKey for features and usability.

• Florisboard

Strainghtforward installation. Seems extremely customisable. No swiping nor autocomplete but both festures are clearly promised for a future release.

Verdict: apart from features promised in the future, thus seems an excellent keyboard.

• Heliboard

Straightforward installation. Language selection included a github redirect to manually download dictionary, which was semi nice.

Proper big-keyed numerical keyboard. Also extremely customisable. Space-key swiping even supports vertical movement.

Verdict: apart from lack of swipe typing, probably the best contender!

• Graffiti

Included because I friggin' loved it back in the day. The (to my knowledge) only app offering graffiti input is badly broken and crashes immediately on modern Android versions. I remember it working quite well on earlier versions, but that was years ago.

Did you know you can turn off autocorrect?

I've been using Swype since its inception and I've stuck with it after it was called SwiftKey and still use it now it's owned by Microsoft.

Gboard is okay enough but I've gotten more used to SwiftKey.

SwiftKey. Yes, I hate it being from Microsoft. But has most of the pros already mentioned in this thread and a some important features (for me) that I haven't found with other keyboard:

I text a lot in Spanish, Portuguese and English; sometimes in French. I can use any of those languages with any preferred layout (qwerty, azerty) or as I do, Spanish layout as a base but from there, I get all characters needed to write properly such as ñ, ç, æ, ê.

Prediction is outstanding, I can start a phrase in one language and continue with other and still get very accurate suggestions. It has been my default keyboard long before Microsoft acquired the company and, for now, big corporate enshittification has been slow. En conclusión y para sumarizar: j'aime bien le SwiftKey clavier, ele tem funções que nenhum outro tem.

Gboard is pretty good. I switched off Swiftkey because Gboard has the lil space bar cursor thing. Swipe typing is pretty great, and the predictions are fine.

I would prefer a non-Google keyboard, but I haven't found one that's easy to install and works the way I want it to.

The amount of people on here that are okay with a corporation phoning home everything you type is a bit scary. Googles Gboard and Microsoft’s SwiftKey are a privacy nightmare. Check out FUTO: https://keyboard.futo.org/

• always offline
• voice input
• swipe typing
• predictive text
• auto correct
• personalization

I use typewise. It feels like there is more space for every button and i no longer accidentally press the space button

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