OpenBoard – FOSS Keyboard for Android which respects your privacy
github.com
github.com
It also has multiple keyboard layouts, of which "terminal" compares favorably to hacker's keyboard. I like that it is configurable, and has a lot of text editing tools when swiping space up.
I admit I lost some typing speed when I switched from the alternatives, but I'm happier with it.
AnySoftKeyboard also is the only open source keyboard for Android that has gesture typing. Which is something I grew to love from when I used Gboard.
Alas, I wish it were. This is all that's missing IMO.
Of course it's still not as good as Gboard, but I'd rather put up with the slight inconvenience for it being open source.
I think the search function is working fine, the app is just called "AnySoftKeyboard 3D Theme" in the F-Droid app but not on the website for some reason.
The other possibility is that it's not present for me because it might not be compatible with GrapheneOS?
But I have problems with search even for other apps. I'm OK with it it because FDroid is very good otherwise.
Edit: thought I would install it and it turns out its English. Using to type this.
[0]: https://helpblog.blackberry.com/en/2013/02/blackberry-10-key...
Edit: thanks a lot aasasd, I had just spent a few minutes looking for it (again), without finding it.
"Let's meet at Nørreport, Lærke says she will be late."
https://github.com/AnySoftKeyboard/AnySoftKeyboard/issues/18...
I keep being perplexed when people reinvent software instead of joining forces (though I'm fine either way if the result is good). A better swipe-typing algorithm would be great, but even some smaller touches would make ASK much nicer: like, don't add a space after an opening parenthesis when swiping. Not rocket science, but needs someone to dig in the app's workings.
There's also the copy paste popup that can be activated by swiping up on the space bar which offers a nice cursor based highlight/copy/paste mode.
Is "internet access" permission just granted for any app by default without asking the user?
There were initiatives (probably 3rd party) for more granular permissions, but I haven't noticed this becoming common. I vaguely remember that Android started asking for some individual permissions not upon installation, but only when they were first used by the app, e.g. camera access. Why is this not the case for internet access?
In a nutshell, how did permission granting in stock Android develop from say Android 3.x times?
I understand that some keyboards want to provide suggestions using a dictionary they download online. Also, I used to use SwiftKey once which wanted to read all my mail to produce better suggestions. Is there even a good way to balance the benefits (features) and risks (uploading a key log if the app is sold/abandoned and taken over by an attacker)?
IIRC it was changed because people complained that a lot of apps required that permission despite the functionality not needing it. E.g. calculator app or whatever. Turns out that you need this permission if you want to display ads. So Google just sided with the advertisers and removed the permission from the display. Generally, I believe that Google likes internet connected things because they as a company have better tools to capture online revenue streams vs offline ones.
I suspect that allowing internet access even in the form of ads opens the possibility for data exfiltration in principle. But I'm not familiar with the Android case at all.
Presumably these Ad APIs would be for access to Google Ads. That would seem like an anti-trust issue.
All permissions an app can use are listed in the manifest file, and are displayed on Google Play.
In practice though, it just doesn't work. I got GBoard for a while because it has a bilingual keyboard, but the autocomplete suggestions often ended up being people's first names instead of common words (and not even the people I was talking to).
Of course I speak only simple French, and those are the cases where its primitive learning is most apt. When I speak English, its suggestions are less useful, because I use a much wider vocabulary and more sophisticated sentence structure.
... Edit: Oh this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25671086
One can delete-left, by starting swiping from the delete button
That's me pasting your comment into a reply box and then using my iPhone 8 to move the cursor around. Once I start moving the cursor all I'm doing is moving it, nothing else. You can see that it starts selecting text randomly twice. It actually took me longer to trigger it this time than usual.
I think it happens when I moved to the top of the text and then make a downward motion. It's really, really annoying on a regular basis.
Will check out OpenBoard, because this sounds like a great feature.
On lineageos there's an option somewhere in the system settings to make the volume buttons move t andhe cursor when the keyboard is open.
Yes, ASK has it, but it is not at all smart about figuring out what word I mean if I happen to not start my gesture on the exactly right starting letter.
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).
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.
The same bank has a maximum password length of 8 characters, and they'll truncate longer passwords without informing the user -- set the password to "correct horse battery staple" and you'll be able to log in with "correct ". When I pointed it out they recommended setting a shorter password.
I'm just not able to launch the app while an F-Droid keyboard is set as default which is just annoying. There's many keyboards on the Play Store that I wouldn't trust to install and use.
And it has NFC payments that does not use Google Pay which is also nice.
I use ssh a lot and all the suggestions and other bells and whistles of other keyboards are more annoyance than anything else, but i need access to all the keys that normal keyboard has.
And '/', tab and enter must be accessible all the time this is absolutely primary requirement for me to use any keyboard.
[1]https://store.planetcom.co.uk/products/cosmo-communicator
I dug through the settings and haven’t seen anything obvious.
And it does not support having multiple languages at once which is incredibly inconvenient when you frequently have to switch between 4 languages when typing and when you often mix some of them.
But if you type without the autocorrect and the predictions, it can be great, I guess.
it still gets confused when you mix languages but in general it's ok
I getting really paranoid...
No idea about others.
I assume they send every word you type to their servers, but I also assume it's encrypted in transport, so it would be somewhat safe?
It's a very very difficult struggle.
Also, my typing ability on mobile has been spoiled by Google's admittedly superior autocorrect. I find that many of the frequent mistakes I make are not detected or modified incorrectly on other keyboards, and have to re-learn a lot. It almost feels like vendor lock-in from bad typing habits.
[0]: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.mozc.android.inputmethod... [1]: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.gorry.android.input.nico...
If we're stuck with on-screen keyboards, please at least maximise use of horizontal space to make each 'key' as wide as possible. There's no need to copy the century-old typewriter convention.
I have a compact Cherry server-rack physical keyboard with the keys arranged in a grid and it's perfectly usable.
It has a free version, too, but the beta users were upgraded to the paid version earlier. Not opensource but doesn't even have access to the net.
Not open-source, unfortunately.
The lack of autocorrect was so refreshing that I just kept typing for practice.
The downside now is that, unlike the QWERTY to Dvorak switch, I've become exceedingly clumsy at typing on ordinary phone keyboards.
No permissions at all is pretty impressive. The only thing I can’t figure out: How will they make money? They seem to have run a IndieGoGo campaign and now ask for donations (hidden in the settings), but that will eventually run out.
This is especially worrying with something as specialized as this.
But it shouldn't be that hard to clone, if something should happen to it.
Am I understand it right that swyping is a patented tech[0] and we will not see it in FOSS for at least 6 more years?
[0] http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H...
I regularly use the swipe spacebar and swipe backspace.
I never use speech or swiping
I've moved from IOS to Android 6 months ago and have been frustrated by a high % of intended alpha char keystrokes ending up as stickers culminating recently in me sending "I miss you" sticker to my boss.
We really need an full open source keyboard with some kind of Swype. Sadly I don't know any.
It seems the permission is again dropped now—but see user reviews for indication that it was indeed once used. For such a personal and important piece of software I for one will prefer an app that doesn't flip-flop on this decision—who's to say that it won't flip again tomorrow? The app is great; it being closed, not so much.
If they haven't already done so since last time I checked, I encourage the FOSS keyboards to consider adding a "raise the position" of the keyboard feature.
If it is to respect privacy, it should also not have any use of CVE friendly languages, hiding possible exploits.
One can just check the permissions of a keyboard to see if it includes internet access. If it does, don't use it.