this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
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FOSS Keyboards

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FOSS Android Keyboard Apps (self.foss_keyboards)
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by recursive_recursion to c/foss_keyboards
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Here's a couple of FOSS keyboard alternatives in no particular order:

Unexpected Keyboard - fdroid

  • GitHub Repo
  • License: GPL-3.0
  • Permissions:

    control vibration
    run at startup

FlorisBoard - fdroid

  • GitHub Repo
  • Apache-2.0
  • Permissions:

    control vibration

Thumb-Key - fdroid

  • GitHub Repo
  • AGPL-3.0
  • Permissions:

    com.dessalines.thumbkey.DYNAMIC_RECEIVER_NOT_EXPORTED_PERMISSION

Notable Extra Notes:

I've used Unexpected Keyboard and FlorisBoard and I'd say that they're great introductory FOSS apps for most users (users inexperienced to sudden changes)

  • Unexpected Keyboard uses Nix in their codebase :D

  • Thumb-Key is maintained by dessalines whom is a Lemmy dev

  • Florisboard is starting to convert their codebase to Rust,

    • literally their commit to main yesterday:

      "Switch native code to Rust"

    so this is pretty awesome to see!!

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Heliboard is currently the most reliable swiper.

You have to load the library for that separately, but it makes it very easy to do.

As far as features that gboard doesn't have, the main one for heliboard is that you can edit the secondary characters. That's pretty damn nice. For one, it means you can set it up to mirror the secondary layout of any keyboard you're used to, reducing any swtich caused learning curve. For another, if you want to roll your own entirely, it's super easy to do, even easier than multilingo, which is the only other editable keyboard I'm aware of.

Gripes? Honestly, only that it isn't a copy kid Swype, my preferred keyboard. It can get close, but it isn't exactly the same. It'll r be what I switch to if I ever have to give up swype.