HeliBoard

FUTO. It’s as basic and barebones as Gboard, while also having more optional features and not owned by Google.

Heliboard, FOSS keyboard app. Very good.

https://keyboard.futo.org/

I just let ai do whatever it wants

On Android? Anysoft keyboard.

It’s the best of the software keyboards available in F-Droid for general use in my opinion. It’s FOSS, fairly-configuable (though I’d like to have a “macro board” where I could, in-app, assign arbitrary characters or text snippets to keyboards). It supports “splitting” the keyboard, which is nice on a tablet.

But it has some pretty substantial issues.

There’s some bug it has, maybe a race condition, maybe multiple. On a slower, MediaTek-based Android device, I’ve seen it “miss” letters. Recently, on a faster one, I’ve seen it insert duplicate text when editing the middle of a word in various programs, like Firefox; I had to turn off the suggestions functionality to avoid that.

While it does have arrow keys, it doesn’t support “drag left/right on the spacebar to move the cursor left/right”, which is behavior that I think is very useful.

In general, with F-Droid software keyboards, I’ve typically found a lack of ability to input things like diacritics, often limited ability to emulate modifier keys for terminal use.

In general, I haven’t really been happy with the Android text input situation. On desktop, I can use emacs, or at least use various plugins to edit the contents of a Firefox text field in emacs. On Android, I’d really like to usually go into a fullscreen editing mode with an external editor when editing text, especially given the small screen on many Android devices — I don’t want to be editing text in a little text field in Firefox or whatever other app. Android doesn’t really have “external editor” support, where the keyboard and editor are separate apps; it has just the software keyboard, which limits options. Maybe it’s possible to implement that at the software keyboard level, have a “use external editor” option; I don’t know.

Going to try thumb key thanks to this thread and see how it goes. Seems like a steep learning curve but I dig the concept of it. Wrote this (slowly) in it.

Is it even legal to use lemmy with any other keyboard than thumb-key?

On my Pixil 9?

HeliBoard.

I did DL the closed source swipe library (never know when I might need swipe type capability.)

Supplemented with FUTO Voice Input.

The clipboard/paste functionality alone is chef’s kiss.

What does APP stand for?

SwiftKey, as it supports 4 simultaneous languages pretty well, including diacritics and predictions. It’s owned by Microsoft so I wouldn’t recommend it unless you have this specific requirement.

Irregular expressions.

b̸̨̪̼̞̩͈̜̮̠̹̘̑̂̀̇́͊͋̄̊̅̚̕͜͠ȩ̷̛͔͈̼̜̜̬̼̰͖̬̓͂̀̇͑͂̈̃͛͌͆c̶̗̭̤̜̩̱͓̙͉̙̼̽̈́̐̇͗͆̕͜͟a̴̛̯͎͕̓̄̑̐͒̄̀̀̒͝ǘ̴̧̢̡̘̱̞̩̯̙͉͙̥̾̅̍͛̏̐̀̂͛̋̃̈́̚͝s̵̨̙̭͙̗͚͉̹͈̙͕̀̈́̓̀͋̋͊̓̊̚ė̶̦̦̰̭̭͚̊͒͆̑͒͒͐̊̀̆͘͠ ̸̢͓͖͚̰͕̯̫͉͍̦͙͔͉͔̂̅̾ỉ̴̬̗͎͒̕ ̴̛̟̤̘̤̝̹̲̙̤̦̱̤͌̂͊̄̆͗̇̆͊̃̍̈́̕͟͡͝LiKe To MeSs ArOuNd with👏different👏t̸e̸x̸t̸ 𝔰𝔱𝔶𝔩𝔢𝔰.

ʞuᴉl pᴉoɹpɟ

Sadly SwiftKey cause it’s hard to find a good enough F-droid alternative with a working auto-complete. Plus ThumbKey when typing with one hand.

gboard. Swipe typing is great. I’d love an open source alternative that doesn’t involve manually copying stuff around.

I think I might have found a replacement for Gboard just now. First I found Fossify had a keyboard, but no Japanese input. Then I found one I’m gonna have to get used to that I’m currently trying out:

スミレ日本語キーボード ( Sumire Japanese keyboard )

I need to comb through settings to see if this is actually the keyboard for me, but I am liking it sk far. Really have to check if for their English QWERTY board there is a setting to bring the period to the letter section or if it is trapped with the other punctuation and make it so it automatically puts a space after doing one of their suggested words in the top bar thing.

The Japanese board is 9-key and also has a QWERTY romaji board, so I’m satisfiedright now. I personally don’tcare about the romaji board since I can read hiragana and katakana and I prefer 9-key because it’s what I am used to on Gboard, but it’s coolfor those that need it for any reason.

I also just learned before posting my comment that the keyboard defaults to that Japanese 9-key everytime you bring up the keyboard. Not a big deal, just another thing to learn and get used to.

Edit: switching to HeliBoard for English and switching as need be for Japanese. Just making the switch to get stuff done in a more efficient and timely manner.