[lucb1e]

No gesture typing in 2011, ahem, 2021 is not even worth considering to me.

I'm using a closed source keyboard because it just works better than all the open stuff (at least when I last tried various keyboard in ~2018), but have it firewalled off completely in AfWall+. That means no updates, though it learns new words like COVID-19 well enough from me, but also no data leaking (I'd happily contribute typing stats if it were some non-profit handling my data).

[solarkraft]

Which one do you use?

[lucb1e]

Swiftkey is what I found to work the best. It puts symbols on keys (e.g. long press m to make /), can make symbols like × by long-pressing *, can have a number row above the keyboard, and the predictions are some of the best as far as I've been able to tell.

I also don't mistrust Microsoft that much, since they don't have a data-oriented profit model, so even if the firewall is slow to boot up and lets it upload a backlog, even then it should be okayish.

I made the mistake of updating it once, though, and got an uglier design and now need to press two buttons to get into incognito mode rather than just one. Lesson learned: never change a nice system if it's fully firewalled and isolated... or at least have a planned retreat.