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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

#111
post #18

No gesture typing, unfortunately. I miss that feature from GBoard, whenever I try an open source one. 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.

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 i…

Which one do you use?

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

#113

No gesture typing, unfortunately. I miss that feature from GBoard, whenever I try an open source one. 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.

You can use the swipe functionality of the gboard even with the open source android keyboard provided you are rooted. It's just a library file that you have to install.

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

#114
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You dont need to, I got myself cosmo communicator[1] and running linux (but still waiting for them to support camera to stop using the android phone completely). I am sick of androoogle ecosystem and touch keyboards :)

[1]https://store.planetcom.co.uk/products/cosmo-communicator

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

#115
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…

ASK has one Keyboard layout that includes cursor keys, tab/ctrl/pipe and forward slash. Very handy for termux and to move the cursor around which i also use all the time.

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.

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

#116
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.

Could you imagine the complaining for treating different ad libraries differently?

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

#117
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any reason why someone would use OpenBoard over AnySoftKeyboard. It would of been nice if there was an explanation of what differentiated it. If someone just wanted a different looking keyboard they could just have created a new theme for AnySoftKeyboard. 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.

Swyping didn't work reliably when I tried one year ago, so I switched back to one of the keyboards of my phone (SwiftKey because I find it slightly better than Samsung's one.) Did they improve it in the last releases?

I'm not sure if they improved it or it just works more reliably with the default theme. But about a year ago it was unusable but now I'm able to use it with only occasional errors.

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.

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

#118
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://f-droid.org/packages/com.menny.android.anysoftkeyboa... 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.

With all default repos + IzzyOnDroid enabled and searching exactly for that package name I get all the language packs and a 7 years old PC theme, but not the app itself. I'll just download the APK, I guess.

For future reference you can use the "Open in app" option in Firefox to open the app in F-Droid from the website link in the parent.

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

#119
post #15

Fun fact, one of my banking app prevents me from launching it if I do not use a "certified" keyboard app. I had bad luck with any keyboard from F-Droid.

Honestly at this point why even bother with banking apps? I've found that most of my banking needs can be done via their mobile-webpages.

Well, one of the banking app that I use is really well done (the other one is garbage), it makes my life really easier and has QR code payments included which is how I pay everything online in my country (Belgium) instead of having to use the card reader and it's also how I reimburse my friends if I owe them money.

And it has NFC payments that does not use Google Pay which is also nice.

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