I’ve been using SwiftKey for waaaaaaay too long. I shoulda switched when Microsoft bought them out.
But old habits die hard. And I love the skin I use.
Help they know everything I’ve typed on a phone. That can’t be good for anyone.
I use Gboard cause it’s the only keyboard that has the preferences that I want. I’m on GrapheneOS, so I just disable the network connection for Gboard.
What preferences are you referring to?
Autocorrect, not removing my corrections after I hit the backspace key, being able to disable the suggestion boxes, being able to customize it to my liking, and a couple other things that I’m currently forgetting about.
Spent a bit of time customising it when I got it, and it’s saved me so much frustration over the past year. Copy pasting, tabbing, having an undo via keyboard, moving character with an arrow. I enjoy typing with a touchscreen now. Would recommend it to anyone wholeheartedly.
Here’s one I made, called Thumb-Key. No internet permissions, made to be private.
Thank you for making this!
I really need to try making something for Android, looks like fun
I appreciate that it’s made for my thumbs as opposed to other, less keyboard optimal digits.
Darn it, I popped into this thread to suggest Thumb-Key, and was beaten to it by the maker of the keyboard!
Thank you for making my phone usage much faster and enjoyable (written using Thumb-Key of course!) :)
I use this after messagease suddenly decided to charge a subscription fee.
It’s pretty darn close in functionality. Highly recommend taking the time to learn it.
Thx! Ya the main reason I made it, was because messagease development died, and all my emails to the messagease team (their only contact email) went unanswered for like 2+ years. So it seemed like a good opportunity to do a from-scratch open source rewrite.
I actually forked your code so I could customize the keyboard a little bit. I was impressed that I didn’t have any problems building the thing right away. Doesn’t always happen for me with open source projects.
One thing that was driving me nuts was how sensitive the swipe gestures on the spacebar are. I guess my thumbs always do a slight swipe when I’m pressing space and it was moving the cursor position on me. I wiped out all of that code. If you’re taking suggestions, a way to disable swipe gestures on the spacebar would be a cool add. I’ll see if I can get together a PR for it as well and be a part of the solution.
Sure, I’d accept a PR for adding a setting to disable all spacebar swipes.
Hey! I tried your keyboard out when I was setting up my new phone - very cool and innovative idea!
Thx!
Unexpected Keyboard on f-droid.
Florisboard on f-droid is pretty ok.
Been using Florisboard for a while. It is the most like gboard, although the swipe typing is not as good. All in all though, I’d still recommend.
Ay, also am using that one
Check out HeliBoard on f-droid.
Maybe you meant Izzy ? https://android.izzysoft.de/repo/apk/helium314.keyboard HeliBoard does not appear to be in the main F-Droid repository unless I’m overlooking something.
It is about to be in official F-Droid repo very soon
You are probably correct. Didn’t check the repo.
Yes, this.
Highly customisable, fast, multi language (so you don’t have to switch), and you can even load in (a degoogled, but still proprietary) swiping library - so it swipes like gboard, looks however you like, and it’s open.
Earlier this month they published 1.0 alpha but do install the 1.2 version from hithub for easier future updates (new signature): github/Helium314/HeliBoard.
How do you get the auto correct / language support to actually work? It’s less than useless for me, it hardly ever provides suggestions or corrects typos and doesn’t recognise a lot of regular words. Adjusting the aggressiveness/confidence in the settings does absolutely nothing.
Idk, it works for me perfectly (I assume you downloaded necessary dictionaries).
Maybe it’s the learning type and still learning? I only ever added a few words to the dictionary and all of those are bcs I intentionally spell them wrong.
Also iirc you can set it to automatically add words to your dictionary after a certain number of times you typed it (eg if I type twice snailporn the third time should be suggested or considered while gesturing).
I have, it’s really not very good IMO. It’s half decent in English. but it sucks ass in my native language, half the suggestions it’s giving are completely wrong or nonsensical in the context of the sentence.
My native language is pretty niche, and I have since remembered that I did have a few funny suggestions at the beginning, however I now dont really differentiate between Heli & g. But the same goes for gboard & Swyft, it needs a few weeks at the beginning.
Also info about my use - I never have autocorrect on (only suggestions), mostly use gestures, and dont use the system personal dictatory but the one in Heli folders.
Yesterday I’ve uninstalled 1.0, installed 1.2, and restored a backup. Works just like before.
The Swype library really saved my ass, I was still holding onto Gboard because of it
I don’t understand how to get the swipe library, could you link it by any chance pls.
See how to enable glide typing in the FAQ:
https://github.com/Helium314/HeliBoard?tab=readme-ov-file#faq--common-issues
Oh thanks so much, all worked out. I’m finally happy with my keyboard after like 2 years
Heliboard is just perfect
I tried to switch to heliboard using multiple languages but its predictions is simply out of league compared to SwiftKey. Reluctantly, I switched back.
I just grabbed it from your suggestion. my gods I forgot how nice it is to have a keyboard with autocorrect that works properly.
thank you very much. this is a fantastic little keyboard and I’m excited to finally replace Swiftkey. cause it’s really been bad for a while.
thanks again 🙏
Is has actually usable offline swype. With third party library though.
I see that’s a fork of Openboard, which I have, but I don’t really use it because it keeps suggesting American spellings (sometimes alongside British spellings), and my thumbs are too mighty to use a mobile phone keyboard without the suggestions. Would you happen to know if Heliboard fixes this?
I have Heliboard set to English (UK) and it suggests British spellings (highlighting the American ones as typos), so I think you should be good. However, I’m not sure if the spellings come from my phone’s system or from the keyboard…
I would nevertheless recommend trying it: it has some very nice improvements over OpenBoard and is under active development, so you could request new features or report bugs and expect them to be taken care of.
Hello, I have search F-Droid app and get no results for Heliboard. Any idea what I could be missing?
You have to look in the Izzy repo.
I found it on Obtanium which you can get from the f-droid store
I use openboard mod with gesture typing
If you’d like to have a more ergonomical keyboard: thumb-key is way worth the learning curve!
+1 for the keyboard. I thought it was a meme app et first but it turned out to be way better than I ever expected. Written from Thumb-key BTW-
Thx! (I’m the main dev)
Ima be honest, I just use Google Keyboard but disable the its networking for the app.
I use Heliboard: https://github.com/Helium314/HeliBoard
You are posting in a privacy community confessing that you were long hooked on some keyboard for their shiny look and what not :-) What do you really want from a keyboard app besides privacy ?
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Funky characters ? https://f-droid.org/en/packages/mf.asciitext.lite/
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As simple as possible ? https://f-droid.org/en/packages/rkr.simplekeyboard.inputmethod/
Probably there is more privacy friendly ones in this long list : https://search.f-droid.org/?q=keyboard&lang=en
Have fun!
Swyping, the core functionality? And maybe one-finger mode?
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I love the Samsung keyboard. It has a delete key
Samsung and Privacy don’t mix. Not worth it IMO to use a closed source keyboard if you care about privacy.
While I do agree and have stopped using the Samsung keyboard, it does have many unique features that I still miss almost daily.
A few that come to mind:
- a special text editing mode (select all to the left, right; turn select mode on and then move around with arrowkeys while selecting, …)
- visual resizing of the keyboard
- “2D” cursor control (move cursor diagonally)
- swipe spacebar left/right to change input method (while having spacebar cursor control enabled!)
I’ve wandered through a bunch of them. Used to use Florisboard. Unexpected Keyboard is pretty good too. The Hacker’s Keyboard for some stuff. Mostly these days Heliboard for general typing.
Simple Keyboard on fdroid. Others have more features, but I can’t switch. The swipe delete and swipe to move cursor are so smooth and I can’t make any other keyboards work as well for me. I wanted florisboard to work, but it just felt clunky
Do you mean the SimpleMobileTools keyboard or the “normal” Simple Keyboard?
Coming from the Samsung keyboard (and before that Apple), I’m quite dissatisfied with the cursor movement in most Android keyboards (including HeliBoard).
the latter
Be sure to switch as soon as Fossify releases their fork of it, Simple Mobile sold out HARD! Thankfully the 2nd in command at Simple Mobile created Fossify and is releasing all the apps to keep everything open sourced.
Didn’t notice that one. I’m using the first simple keyboard, from rkkr. Think the simple mobile one must be a later addition
