[a_e_k]

Interesting. I've been using the Hacker's Keyboard with Termux, but it doesn't seem to have received any updates in a long time. (I'm fine with programs being considered complete, but I also realize that Android is unfortunately a moving target.)

Has anyone used both and could compare them?

[z2h-a6n]

I've used both, though I'm not sure I can compare them directly, since it has been a year or more since I switched from Hacker's Keyboard.

Unexpected Keyboard works well for me when using Termux, possibly even better than Hacker's Keyboard, since I find it easier to swipe on a key to get to uncommonly-used symbols rather than switching to a different keyboard layer. Every now and then I accidentally swipe a key when I meant to press it, and end up entering a accented character when I didn't mean to, but this is fairly rare. I don't use Termux very often, but for occasional vim or terminal usage it's totally sufficient.

One cool feature of Unexpected Keyboard (which may be available elsewhere, I haven't looked at many others) is that you can swipe left and right on the space bar to quickly and accurately scroll left and right in a text field. I find this about as fast as tapping at a position in a text field, but much more accurate.

[cfiggers]

> One cool feature of Unexpected Keyboard (which may be available elsewhere, I haven't looked at many others) is that you can swipe left and right on the space bar to quickly and accurately scroll left and right in a text field.

Nice! That's a feature of Google's GBoard, which ships as the default on Pixels but is available to most Android phones. I use it extremely often (including twice while writing this comment) and not having it is one of the big reasons I found Hacker Keyboard frustrating. Hearing that Unexpected Keyboard has it is pushing me over the edge to give it a trial run.

[LoganDark]

Gboard's implementation is super annoying for me because it keeps trying to skip over word boundaries, and it's quite difficult to move just one or two characters over, because it waits for you to swipe far enough before activating any movement. Just awful.

[JadeNB]

> Gboard's implementation is super annoying for me because it keeps trying to skip over word boundaries, and it's quite difficult to move just one or two characters over, because it waits for you to swipe far enough before activating any movement. Just awful.

This is interesting—Gboard also by default uses a long-press on the space bar to change keyboards, so I often find myself triggering that while meaning to scroll (or, more often, meaning to long press 'n' for '!'), but, as long as I'm quick enough, I've never observed it to be hesitant about moving one or two characters.

[kqr]

Does GBoard allow you to select text by pressing shift and then swiping on space?

[throwaway290]

I just found out I can do it on iphone thanks to your comment. Wow.

[Grimblewald]

One hugely underated offering of unexpected keyboard is the ease with which you can define entierly new keyboards. Want a keyboard for futhark runes? They're unicode so go for it, you totally can. Like thorn as a concept and a character, and want to use it with ease? þen add it for easy use. This keyboard is truly the hackers keyboard. I spent a month using termux exclusively, writing cli apps for things as i needed them and without unexpected keyboard that would have been a really painful experience, rather than mildly inconveniant at times.

[sandbach]

Apologies for pedantry: in ðat case you should have used Þ U+00DE LATIN CAPITAL LETTER THORN, as it begins a sentence.

[skrebbel]

This is what I come to HN for

[Grimblewald]

Fantastic addition, no appologies neccesary.

[wcrossbow]

> is that you can swipe left and right on the space bar to quickly and accurately scroll left and right in a text field. I find this about as fast as tapping at a position in a text field, but much more accurate

I recently learned about a hidden iphone feature. If you hold the spacebar for about halve a second you can move freely the cursor around any text field.

[tcrenshaw]

I used Hacker's keyboard for years before moving over to unexpected keyboard for any terminal work done via phone. Unexpected keyboard gives easier access to symbols and has slightly larger keys (less keys on the main layer) than Hacker's keyboard.

I still use Gboard for my main keyboard, but looking for replacement suggestions that have a good swipe to text

[notpushkin]

FUTO Keyboard comes to mind: https://keyboard.futo.org/

Swipe worked pretty well but I had some problems (perhaps switching languages or something? can't remember) so I switched back to plain AOSP keyboard for now.

[tasuki]

Yes, jesus, swipe to text! It's 21st century! Why can't they make it recognize various basic words in the three languages I use?

[Groxx]

Google seems to have forgotten how to do it well, to be fair. It's one of the lost arts of the ancient civilization of ~2019

[creshal]

I started with Hacker's Keyboard and moved to Unexpected because Hacker's stopped working on newer Android devices. It's not a 1:1 replacement, but it works really well once you get used to it, and it also works as a decent general purpose keyboard.

[tester457]

Unexpected Keyboard allows you to create your own keyboard layouts so I prefer it.