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by parliament32 2432 days ago
On a related note, does anyone have recommendations for a Gboard alternative? I've disabled all the "pipe everything I type directly to HQ for analysis" things in Gboard but I'd prefer a non-Google alternative.
6 comments

AnySoftKeyboard is completely open-source and is distributed through both the Play Store and F-Droid. It comes with many different layouts and there are a few language packs available. They recently added experimental support for swipe typing if that's a concern.
SwiftKey has been working wonders for me for years now.
I switched to the AOSP keyboard because SwiftKey kept getting worse the more it learned (it always became usable again after deleting everything).
If you don't mind having source or phoning home, SwiftKey.

If you're a CLI poweruser Hacker's Keyboard (FOSS) [1]. There is also Simple Keyboard (FOSS) [2] and there's a bunch of others available on F-Droid.

I do wonder what we should switch to from Qwerty, on mobile specifically. There is, for example, Keybee [3].

[1] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.pocketworkstation.pckeyb...

[2] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/rkr.simplekeyboard.inputmeth...

[3] http://keybee.it/

I've been using and loving MessageEase [1] for several years now. There's a learning curve, but as much typing as I end up doing on my phone, the investment was well worth it. It's also hugely customizeable and makes coding much easier on a phone--not that I make a habit of that.

[1] https://www.exideas.com/ME/index.php

I've been using Simple Keyboard, which seems to be what it says on the tin. Not a lot of features, doesn't make my phone sad. (In today's android, 2GB is not enough memory, saving some ram on the keyboard makes my launcher less likely to swap out when it's in the background; I wish I was overreacting)

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=rkr.simplekeyb...

I have a pretty good experience using SwiftKey for the past few years.
Does it still work when you block its internet access?