I use Gboard.

The main things I like about it are:

  • Very customizable (I like having number row always visible, and having long press for symbols on each letter).
  • Has gif support built in.

My biggest pain point is:

  • It auto corrects words that are spelled correctly to other words. I type “our” and it changes to “out”, I recently typed “purpose” and it changed it to “purple”. Autocorrect is awesome and necessary, but I hate that it corrects words to other words and not just typos. I wish I could find a keyboard that has the things I like without this annoyance.

Am I looking for a unicorn? Let me know! 😄

  • noughtnaut@lemmy.world
    0·
    6 months ago

    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.

    • Linssiili@sopuli.xyz
      0·
      6 months ago

      That seems interesting, but it feels like it would be slower than thumb-key? How long have you been using it, and how high wpm do you have? For reference, I have used thumb-key for 6 months or so, and can achieve 40-45 wpm

  • Sami@lemmy.zipEnglish
    0·
    6 months ago

    OpenBoard. Has what I need in terms of customization and I can turn off word prediction/correction (not sure if it even has it to begin with). Used to use Swiftkey several years ago but i like OpenBoard more nowadays.

  • Pixel@lemmy.sdf.org
    0·
    6 months ago

    Swift key with auto correct cranked to 11. Haven’t found any other keyboard yet that lets me smash any nearby keys and have it fix it just fine.

  • glitchdx@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    6 months ago

    i used to use touchpal, because I liked that I could swipe up on a key to get the upper case version of the letter, or swipe in other directions to get other variants.

    They enshittifies the product a few years back by inserting ads into every app i was using.

    These days i just use the android default, but I miss the functionality touchpal had.

  • /home/pineapplelover@lemm.ee
    0·
    6 months ago

    Gboard but with network permissions turned off. Works great. Haven’t had any issues with an autosuggest and swiping. I don’t use autocorrect.

        • Ghoelian@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          0·
          6 months ago

          It’s not a setting, it’s a permission. Android will just not allow an app to connect to the internet if it doesn’t have that permission.

          On regular Android you can’t disable this one though, but on GrapheneOS for example you can.

          • blackstrat@lemmy.fwgx.uk
            0·
            6 months ago

            Android and gboard both made by Google. I suspect there are exceptions to any system setting. What with google being evil… Sorry i mean, what with the “one rogue engineer” at google who creates so many google agreeable faux pas.

  • TheBest@midwest.socialEnglish
    0·
    6 months ago

    Ill be the lone user of Anysoft in this thread. Its on F-Droid and the playstore. Open source. Came from gboard, but realized that during all of the states banning porn thing I don’t want google to know everything I type.

    Its customizable and a good replacement for gboard IMO. It was a slight learning curve to be slightly more precise with my typing. Gboard you can just randomly mash and google seems to know what you’re going for. I also found the autocorrect to be worse until I added enough of my own slang into the dictionary, but now its fantastic.

  • Vinny_93@lemmy.world
    0·
    6 months 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.

    • MrQuallzin@lemmy.world
      0·
      6 months ago

      Same, been using it long before it was bought by Microsoft. It has customizations I like, and (when it works properly) I can copy and paste between my phone and computer.

    • Paradachshund@lemmy.todayOP
      0·
      6 months ago

      I like autocorrecting typos, I don’t like autocorrecting words into other words. As far as I’ve found you can’t have one without the other. Correct me if I’m wrong though.

        • Paradachshund@lemmy.todayOP
          0·
          6 months ago

          It’s a shame. It doesn’t seem like it would be hard to implement one that doesn’t change correctly spelled words at all.

          • Vinny_93@lemmy.world
            0·
            6 months ago

            Well SwiftKey advertised with some AI (actually just algorithm) that could analyse the words you typed before and glean from context what you are trying to say and correct accordingly. I find it’s wrong more often than not so I keep autocorrect off. Also I use SwiftKey in two languages, English and my native language, Dutch. It does not anticipate in which language it should predict at all. It mostly just favours English.

            • Paradachshund@lemmy.todayOP
              0·
              6 months ago

              Yeah that’s exactly the kind of thing I don’t want. If I wrote a word and it’s spelled correctly, I wish autocorrect would leave it alone instead of incorrectly guessing a different word. Oh well, one can dream.

      • gedaliyah@lemmy.world
        0·
        6 months ago

        It’s pretty easy to switch, es posible cambiar con una toca. You can map it to a long press or swipe or use a dedicated key.

          • gedaliyah@lemmy.world
            0·
            6 months ago

            How would you like to switch between them? I use 3 regularly with different layouts and I’ve never had an issue. For me, a keyboard swipe is quicker than a long press and tap to select, or a tap on a single button. It could be any of the above. You can also have the switching button in the top menu or by the space bar.

            Is there a better switching method for you?

      • gedaliyah@lemmy.world
        0·
        6 months ago

        I don’t think there is a free/private keyboard with gifs or stickers. There’s gboard, SwiftKey, Samsung keyboard, and increasingly sketchy keyboards from there on down.

          • gedaliyah@lemmy.world
            0·
            6 months ago

            Oh, I meant free as in not proprietary. Free as in freedom.

            I remember hearing about Fleksy keyboard years ago, although I can’t really attest to it. It seems to have far fewer trackers than most proprietary keyboards, and just for analytics. Most other keyboards you find will send your data to advertisers or worse.

            So far, most of the ones suggested here are free and private, meaning that they belong to the community and not to a company, and they do not collect or sell your data. That may be a factor for you or it may not, but I think a lot of people on Lemmy tend to care about it.

    • gedaliyah@lemmy.world
      0·
      6 months ago

      I’ve heard people say that the gesture typing is not great, but I’ve never had an issue.At least not more than any other keyboard.

      For me, the voice typing is literally the best I’ve ever used.

      I don’t think there is a free and private keyboard that has gifs, stickers, etc. but I do like the way FUTO handles emoji.

      • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world
        0·
        6 months ago

        I guess it ticks quite differently than gboard (which I don’t use). It is very customizable, even with add on modules.

        I don’t use many of the options, though. I don’t like long press. No idea what you mean with GIF support.

        The autocorrect usually asks whether I accept the correction or not.

        • Paradachshund@lemmy.todayOP
          0·
          6 months ago

          Cool thanks for the response. Gif support is a button that lets you search and insert gifs from giphy. I use it a lot because I like memes 😅

      • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
        0·
        6 months ago

        It’s customizable, though you can’t, say, arbitrary drag keyboard keys around on an Android device. There are add-on layouts, and it’s possible to create those.

        I don’t know what “GIF” support involves. It has some support for various Unicode emojis. If this is some sort of Android-native rich text field functionality to embed arbitrary image files, not that I’m aware of, but I may also just not use any apps that support it…I think all the apps I use may just edit regular text.

        It does not support swiping, something that I don’t use but which some people do rely on.

        The two most-significant things that it doesn’t do that I would like:

        • It does not have the ability to attach arbitrary macro text strings to a key (well, absent from creating a new keyboard, I suppose), something that I have wanted.

        • It doesn’t support the “drag on spacebar to move cursor in a text field” functionality that some Android software keyboards have.

        Of the open-source keyboards, it’s the one that I find the best.

        I believe – not in front of my device – that you can adjust the aggressiveness of text correction or disable it.

        You can set it up to keep numbers visible.

        I just don’t like correcting words into other words.

        So, the normal way to deal with this – I don’t remember whether Gboard supports this, but I suspect it does, and Anysoft definitely does – is that autocorrecting keyboards don’t correct a word that they recognize as a word into another word. The thing is that they won’t recognize every word out there. So what you do is to create a “user dictionary”, and add your word to it. Then the keyboard knows that your brand name or technical term or whatever is a real word. With Anysoft, you see a list of corrections immediately above the keyboard, and you can tap on the word in its uncorrected form to add it to the user dictionary. You can go into the keyboard settings to view and delete or edit terms in the user dictionary. I don’t know about Gboard, whether this is an Android-wide convention or not, but with Anysoft, if you hit space after a word and get an unwanted correction, you can, before hitting any other keys, hit backspace and it’ll delete the space and revert the correction; you can then tap space again and continue with the uncorrected word, if you only want a single uncorrected word and don’t want to add it to your user dictionary.

  • asudox@lemmy.worldM
    0·
    6 months ago

    I use FlorisBoard Beta with the Material You theme. It looks amazing.

    FUTO Keyboard also looks very pretty, but it’s a bit bloated.

  • cosmicrookie@lemmy.world
    0·
    6 months ago

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

      • cosmicrookie@lemmy.world
        0·
        6 months ago

        Next to f and h

        It takes some getting used to but i am pretty happy with it! You swipe up on the buttons for capitals and it has some gestures that makes deleting and restoring quite easy

    • Don_alForno@feddit.orgDeutsch
      0·
      6 months ago

      The keyboard itself is great, I just feel like the auto correction keeps doing everything in it’s power to fuck up what I typed, more so than before I switched.

    • DiabolicalBird@lemmy.ca
      0·
      6 months ago

      I absolutely adore this keyboard, I just wish they’d add a voice input button so I could use FUTO’s voice to text with it.

      • cosmicrookie@lemmy.world
        0·
        6 months ago

        Its not that difficult actually! They even have a mini game and a very good tutorial in the app!

        I feel that its gotten a lot easier to type since i got this and a lot less typos