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Comment by yonixw | Hacker News Reader

In my opinion, adding a dedicated keyboard\ui buttons for common Markdown characters is a must (like: #,[](),* etc..). Otherwise it will be unbearable to find them in the builtin keyboard. Last week I searched for the '%' character on my Xiaomi Redmi, only to find it behind 3 keyboard screen. Insanity.

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I was just thinking that Markdown doesn't seem like a great fit for Android specifically because of the limited size of the keyboard.

There's third-party keyboards like [CodeBoard](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gazlaws.co...) that makes symbols etc. easier but I'm pretty wary of installing keyboards given the number of permissions they get.

Another idea could be to explore long-press formatting options or a formatting menu on selected text. Still awkward, but perhaps easier to do.

Maybe give Hacker's Keyboard [0] a shot. It's my go-to for a full keyboard experience on Android. I have all permissions denied, and haven't ran into a situation where I needed to turn any on for it to work. YMMV on that though.

[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.pocketwork...

I've had the same experience with Hacker's Keyboard. Although I now use it from F-Droid, I haven't noticed any easy to spot differences between the Play Store version and the F-Droid version.

Ah that's the one I was thinking of but couldn't find it. Thanks!

Open source is a good bit more trustworthy with keyboard permissions.

Thank you for the feedback! I will improve the keyboard bar in the next release (it currently only has the undo button). Then it will contain buttons for different common Markdown options which will toggle the current line or selection.

While I (thankfully) haven't had to write Markdown from my phone, I think this is might be worth exploring. I have very similar experiences trying to find common programming symbols in the Google keyboard on my Pixel.

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