I saw a post on reddit asking for open source android keyboards in recent years since a lot of the posts were older. One user recommended “Futo Keyboard”.
To be clear, I’m not affiliated with them but I’ve been trying them based on that reddit response and I just wanted to share here in case anyone else has been looking.
In short, this keyboard is about as close to awesome as you can get so far. Features I like:
- Feels like GBOARD
- Works fully offline
- Gesture typing (about 75% as accurate as GBoard)
- Built in offline speech to text (no third party engine needed to download
I’ve tried other options like heliboard and openboard and they are great too, but I think so far this has been the best I’ve tried and I wanted to recommend it on here in case anyone else is looking. Feel free to share any other setups or recommendations below!
EDIT: it was pointed out that it is source-available and not open source. Apologize for my initial assumption. The source and license can be viewed here: Futo Keyboard. It is fully open for non-commercial use. Anything commercial can have restrictions.
I’ve been dailying the keyboard for a solid 4mths at this point.
As someone who types in more than one language, sometimes even using the English script to type, it’s mildly annoying in the autocorrect. But it’s actually really great for English typing atm. Other languages, I’m still looking forward to trying.
I did switch to an S23 last week and the Samsung Keyboard is so good that I haven’t been able to switch back to FUTO as of yet.
My only gripe with the Samsung keyboard is that their only alternative distribution is Dvorak, and by now I’m 100% a colemak user even on touch screens. So I use open board with swipe typing.
Thanks for the input. I sometimes use another language but it’s rare so I haven’t been able to try to on here. However I agree. While not perfect, the autocorrect and text prediction for English is quite good! Ive been always going back to gboard but hoping this one is good enough to stay on. Ill update this post as I use it longer.
While Gboard has better autocorrect, FUTO’s gestures and automatic punctuations became muscle memory in a way that made it difficult to get back to.
I’m gonna side step this conversation to point out nice name lolol
Lmaooo. Yes! Thank you so much 😂. It’s a reference to the MC’s catchphrase from Stein’s;Gate, an anime. He says El Psy Kongroo. I forget the logic behind it, but i thought that was a solid username 😂.