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OpenBoard – FOSS Keyboard for Android which respects your privacy

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Re: OpenBoard – FOSS Keyboard for Android which respects your privacy

#71

Post by izacus »

Bellamy wrote: post #40
lucb1e wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "default" keyboard differs from device to device. Most devices have a closed source keyboard either from Google (gboard) or from Microsoft (swiftkey). If I remember correctly, both send subsets of what you type to the mothership and pinky swear to only use it for product improvement and guard your data with their lives.

So Xiaomi, Google, Samsung etc. knows everything we write and erase? I getting really paranoid...

Google claims to use differential privacy / federated learning for their GBoard: https://ai.googleblog.com/2020/05/federated-analytics-collab...

No idea about others.

Re: OpenBoard – FOSS Keyboard for Android which respects your privacy

#72

Post by Peter-Jan »

MayeulC wrote: post #12

I use AnysoftKeyboard (on F-Droid) [1]. I's pretty good, but has issues with the French apostrophe, that's often used to combine words. 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…

I love AnysoftKeyboard but it completely freezes once every few days when pressing the emoji key. Forcing me to reboot my phone. Which is quite annoying to say the least.

https://github.com/AnySoftKeyboard/AnySoftKeyboard/issues/18...

Re: OpenBoard – FOSS Keyboard for Android which respects your privacy

#73

Post by ktm5j »

Kelamir wrote: post #63
ktm5j wrote: post #60

Holy crow, the feature where you can move the cursor by swiping back and forth on the spacebar is AMAZING. Seriously, I have always struggled with moving the cursor in text on either android or ios. This is great!

Not only that. You can also erase text by swiping left starting from the delete button.

Neat!

Re: OpenBoard – FOSS Keyboard for Android which respects your privacy

#74

Post by izacus »

tumblewit wrote: post #28

As a very long term iOS user, when I saw this headline my first reaction was why is keyboard privacy even a thing i've never even bothered changing the keyboard of iOS and would certainly be prompted for any suspicious activity like mic or camera and would instantly reject it if i ever installed one. But this is very complicated on Android. I once maintained an Android phone for my Dad and the permissions prompt on t…

Well, iOS uses the same differential ML approach for their keyboard suggestion learning just like Google's GBoard does. So you kinda have the same concern there.

Re: OpenBoard – FOSS Keyboard for Android which respects your privacy

#75

Post by troyvit »

Noxmiles wrote: post #49

Well, it seems not to have a Swype functionality. Actually, on small Touchscreens without feedback this is quite essential. We really need an full open source keyboard with some kind of Swype. Sadly I don't know any.

Multiling O Keyboard (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=kl.ime.oh) has swipe. Accuracy is not great and it takes awhile to train but it doesn't have internet permissions at all. It's also highly configurable.

Re: OpenBoard – FOSS Keyboard for Android which respects your privacy

#76

Post by Semaphor »

StavrosK wrote: post #3

I would love it if we could get something like SwiftKey, but actively developed. Its predictions are magic, but lately it has been getting more and more buggy, suggesting words that don't exist, changing already-correct words to nonsense, and refusing to learn.

Try deleting cache and data (backup your personal dictionary first). As with everything smart that learns (obviously YMMV, but that is my experience) it gets worse over time. Back when I used SwiftKey I deleted everything once a month to have a decent experience.

Re: OpenBoard – FOSS Keyboard for Android which respects your privacy

#77

Post by approxim8ion »

bestboy wrote: post #57

In case one is using LineageOS, what keyboard is used then? Is it the vanilla AOSP keyboard? How does the LineageOS keyboard compare to privacy conscious keyboards like this one or the AnysoftKeyboard?

My understanding is the LOS very much uses the vanilla AOSP keyboard, which is basic but FOSS so about the same privacy-wise as this or ASK.

Re: OpenBoard – FOSS Keyboard for Android which respects your privacy

#78

Post by aasasd »

troyvit wrote: post #75
Noxmiles wrote: post #49

Well, it seems not to have a Swype functionality. Actually, on small Touchscreens without feedback this is quite essential. We really need an full open source keyboard with some kind of Swype. Sadly I don't know any.

Multiling O Keyboard ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=kl.ime.oh ) has swipe. Accuracy is not great and it takes awhile to train but it doesn't have internet permissions at all. It's also highly configurable.

It didn't have the net permission until sometime in 2019, when it started to have it—without any indication as to why, and even the text ‘no internet permission = safer’ remained on the store page.

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.

Re: OpenBoard – FOSS Keyboard for Android which respects your privacy

#79

Post by wongarsu »

darkwater wrote: post #27
est31 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is "internet access" permission just granted for any app by default without asking the user? 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. Gener…

Even if I hate ads and I think one should be able to ban them forever on their devices, Android could just add an "Internet access" permission that only counts for Internet access required outside the Ads API, so they would keep their ads and users could be a bit safer on the "this app is snooping my data" side.

That would only work if they open up the Ads API to work with any ad network. Otherwise it would basically kill any competition in the Android Ad space, which would probably lead to EU and US regulators coming down hard on Google.

Re: OpenBoard – FOSS Keyboard for Android which respects your privacy

#80

Post by hyperpallium2 »

stiray wrote: post #61
older wrote: post #4

Is it better than Hacker's Keyboard? https://github.com/klausw/hackerskeyboard

For me hackers keyboard is still far best keyboard found, the only thing that annoys me is that it has no smileys button, for everything else it fits great. 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 pr…

Space doesn't repeat, and will not fix.
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