I’ve been using SwiftKey for waaaaaaay too long. I shoulda switched when Microsoft bought them out.

But old habits die hard. And I love the skin I use.

Help they know everything I’ve typed on a phone. That can’t be good for anyone.

Edit: Holy fuck everyone, thanks for all of the responses!

I went with Heliboard, and typing this, it looks like I have to change a couple more settings to get it like I had Swiftkey, but I already like it more.

The fact you can basically make your own skin by changing all of the colors of the keyboard is amazing.

Fuck microsoft’s ai keyboard.

Heliboard for lyfe!

Edit edit: trying to delete my data from Swiftkey was INSANELY hard. I couldn’t do it from my phone, so I had to login with a computer. They think they are slick… Fuckers…

    • @[email protected]
      14•7 months ago

      Yes, this.

      Highly customisable, fast, multi language (so you don’t have to switch), and you can even load in (a degoogled, but still proprietary) swiping library - so it swipes like gboard, looks however you like, it’s fully local, and it’s open.

      Earlier this month they published 1.0 alpha but do install the 1.2 version from github for easier future updates (new signature): github/Helium314/HeliBoard.

      • LiveLMEnglish
        5•7 months ago

        The Swype library really saved my ass, I was still holding onto Gboard because of it

      • @[email protected]
        3•7 months ago

        How do you get the auto correct / language support to actually work? It’s less than useless for me, it hardly ever provides suggestions or corrects typos and doesn’t recognise a lot of regular words. Adjusting the aggressiveness/confidence in the settings does absolutely nothing.

        • @[email protected]
          2•7 months ago

          Idk, it works for me perfectly (I assume you downloaded necessary dictionaries).

          Maybe it’s the learning type and still learning? I only ever added a few words to the dictionary and all of those are bcs I intentionally spell them wrong.

          Also iirc you can set it to automatically add words to your dictionary after a certain number of times you typed it (eg if I type twice snailporn the third time should be suggested or considered while gesturing).

          • @[email protected]
            2•7 months ago

            I have, it’s really not very good IMO. It’s half decent in English. but it sucks ass in my native language, half the suggestions it’s giving are completely wrong or nonsensical in the context of the sentence.

            • @[email protected]
              2•7 months ago

              My native language is pretty niche, and I have since remembered that I did have a few funny suggestions at the beginning, however I now dont really differentiate between Heli & g. But the same goes for gboard & Swyft, it needs a few weeks at the beginning.

              Also info about my use - I never have autocorrect on (only suggestions), mostly use gestures, and dont use the system personal dictatory but the one in Heli folders.

              Yesterday I’ve uninstalled 1.0, installed 1.2, and restored a backup. Works just like before.

    • @nosnahc
      9•7 months ago

      Heliboard is just perfect

    • NimaEnglish
      8•7 months ago

      I just grabbed it from your suggestion. my gods I forgot how nice it is to have a keyboard with autocorrect that works properly.

      thank you very much. this is a fantastic little keyboard and I’m excited to finally replace Swiftkey. cause it’s really been bad for a while.

      thanks again 🙏

    • @[email protected]
      5•7 months ago

      I tried to switch to heliboard using multiple languages but its predictions is simply out of league compared to SwiftKey. Reluctantly, I switched back.

    • nomad
      2•7 months ago

      Is has actually usable offline swype. With third party library though.

    • Bob
      1•7 months ago

      I see that’s a fork of Openboard, which I have, but I don’t really use it because it keeps suggesting American spellings (sometimes alongside British spellings), and my thumbs are too mighty to use a mobile phone keyboard without the suggestions. Would you happen to know if Heliboard fixes this?

      • @[email protected]
        2•7 months ago

        I have Heliboard set to English (UK) and it suggests British spellings (highlighting the American ones as typos), so I think you should be good. However, I’m not sure if the spellings come from my phone’s system or from the keyboard…

        I would nevertheless recommend trying it: it has some very nice improvements over OpenBoard and is under active development, so you could request new features or report bugs and expect them to be taken care of.

    • @[email protected]
      1•7 months ago

      Hello, I have search F-Droid app and get no results for Heliboard. Any idea what I could be missing?