EDIT: Thanks, guys! I ended up downloading Heliboard from f-droid :)

  • EyedustEnglish
    38•6 days ago

    I’ve been down this rabbit hole and here’s the haul from Wonderland:

    Conventional:

    • Heliboard - Has glide typing, but the available library is unstable and old. The most polished.

    • Florisboard - Currently under heavy development, but what’s there is more than usable and very well done.

    • Unexpected Keyboard - I actually love this one, but as a Fold user I need some auto correct. Uses swipe motions on each key for symbols and punctuation.

    Unconventional:

    • Thumbkey - A 3x3 grid using taps and swipes to type. I flip flop between this and Heliboard atm. Has circular motions to input caps or numbers. MASSIVE amount of layouts, including language, programmer, writer and more. Easy layout switch key on the fly.

    • Flickboard - Same setup as Thumbkey. This would be my go to ever since they added a landscape layout that smart switches on inner Fold screen, but there’s no separate key height for it, so you have to deal with non-uniform on one screen which isn’t easy to type on. Also has circular motion for caps. No numeric, but there’s the option of having a small number column.

    • 8vim - The only one of it’s kind since 8pen died. I’m learning this one and it’s great, but wonky on inner Fold screen. Its hard to explain, but you use circular motions around on X wheel to input whole words at a time letter by letter. Start center, drag out into a quadrant, rotate to get your letter, go back to center, without lifting go to your next quadrant for the next letter. When you’re done and back on center, let go to insert space, or you can move out into a quadrant then lift to end without a space. Takes a lot of getting used to.

    • monk
      1•49 minutes ago

      Oh wow, I’ve abandoned Thumbkey on a Fold, but I didn’t know of Flickboard.

      • EyedustEnglish
        4•6 days ago

        Lol I know the pain. It takes a few days to get to acceptable typing speed, but you can get pretty fast (some report 56 wpm which is pretty good for a virtual keyboard).

        Just make sure you know what you want between Thumbkey or Messagease layouts. I started with Messagease layout and it was all good until I spotted some really nice Thumbkey programmer layouts and switched.

        • @[email protected]
          3•6 days ago

          Gonna stick with it for a bit, and check the other one out. Some words are already coming out quicker. Thanks for the tips

    • Captain Beyond
      4•6 days ago

      It should be noted that Heliboard does not “have glide typing” but rather it supports loading the proprietary Google swype library.

      • EyedustEnglish
        3•6 days ago

        One that’s two years old at that. Its not the best solution, but it’s the only one we have if you absolutely need glide typing.

        It hitches up sometimes and I find myself getting the wrong words more than other glide typing solutions from closed source keyboards, but it’s not horrible.

        Sorry I wasn’t more clear on this in my original post.

    • qazEnglish
      4•6 days ago

      Do you also know if any of them support multi language spell checking?

      • EyedustEnglish
        2•6 days ago

        Heliboard has multiple dictionary support. Florisboard is still in development for this feature, from what I know. Unexpected Keyboard has none by design, being made for termux and programming.

        The unconventional list also has none by design, maybe because there’s less of a chance to fat thumb the keys.

        Heliboard would be your winner there, for now.

        • qazEnglish
          2•6 days ago

          Thanks, I’ll try it again

          EDIT: It works well

    • irotsoma
      14•7 days ago

      I’ve been using Heliboard for a while. It does most that gboard does, but the predictions aren’t as good of course.

      • @Static_RocketEnglish
        9•6 days ago

        Yeah, I’ve been using it for about a year now. It’s a little frustrating that it will learn my misspellings before it suggests a proper replacement, but otherwise I have no complaints. Direct upgrade over the stock AOSP keyboard.

        • @[email protected]
          3•6 days ago

          I’ve had the same problem with HeliBoard learning garbage. I just changed my settings though, and I think it should help:

          1. Open HeliBoard settings
          2. Open Text correction settings
          3. Scroll all the way to the bottom, and turn off “Add words to personal dictionary”

          If you scroll all the way to the top again, you can manually manage the personal dictionary, including adding words you do want, and deleting any junk that was added by mistake, before switching that setting off.

    • @asdfasdfasdf
      3•6 days ago

      I love it, but it has some fairly big annoying things about it and I’m disappointed to see how little movement there is to fix them in GitHub. The dev seems very insactive.

    • chebra
      -16•7 days ago

      @freijon the question was specifically about open-source. Is this your first day here?

        • chebra
          -17•7 days ago

          @freijon feel free to learn what “open source” means. Look, considering the number and frequency of posts in this community talking about this issue, you don’t get the benefit of the doubt anymore. People arguing that futo is open source are just spammers. Look around.

          • @[email protected]English
            14•6 days ago

            No need to be unfriendly. I modified my original comment to make sure everyone understands what they get when they install this keyboard.

            • Arthur Besse
              2•6 days ago

              Thanks for editing, but I deleted your comment anyway because it was still just recommending something that is not open source.

              fyi there is a thread here discussing the moderation of this thread.

  • Blastboom StriceEnglish
    20•7 days ago

    Florisboard beta is what I use. Extremely customisable. I think the biggest things that lacks are custom background photo and text-gliding (I ~dont use any of these though).

    I made it almost identical to the gboard theme I was using previously and it’s so cool.

    • @[email protected]English
      1•7 days ago

      I am a big florisboard fan too, but I can not get autocorrect to work? How did you manage that? Also, I have glide typing, how do you not?

      • Blastboom Strice
        2•6 days ago

        Oh, I don’t use any autocorrect.😅 Does it have one? I know it has autofill, suggestions with dictionaries and spell check, but not sure if it has autocorrect.

        I have all of these disabled (I only have the auto-capitalization after a period and auto period after double space).😄

        Wait, are you on beta? I think they have gliding, but it is only for gestures, not typing.

    • @ocassionallyaduck
      4•6 days ago

      It’s trying and I paid for it. But the swiping accuracy is shit still, and it has limited language support.

      • @[email protected]
        1•6 days ago

        Thanks! I’ve added a disclaimer to my original comment. I was also mistakenly under the impression it was open-source.

        • chebra
          -1•6 days ago

          @Karcinogen Disclaimer isn’t going to cut it. Are you the same person as the other 5 guys in this thread who had exactly the same argument and also “solved” it by adding a disclaimer? Is this an organized spam campaign? Because it sure looks like that. If you like FUTO, fine, but go take it to a community that isn’t focused on open source. Is that too much to ask? Every week? With exactly the same arguments? Are you guys blind?

          • @[email protected]
            0•6 days ago

            Why won’t a disclaimer cut it? I didn’t know that FUTO intentionally misconstrued the term open-source until now. What else am I supposed to do than admit I was wrong and correct my comment?

    • @moakleyEnglish
      1•6 days ago

      You got my hopes up. All I want is a keyboard that has swiping and doesn’t ever auto-insert spaces. Unfortunately this ain’t it.

  • Drew
    6•6 days ago

    I’ve been using heliboard for more than a year without any issues. Only think I don’t like is the lack of emoji search(?)

  • JeenaEnglish
    13•7 days ago

    I like HeliBoard. It automatically switches between the languages I write in.

    • @[email protected]
      3•7 days ago

      How do you set it up to do that? I just discovered multilingual typing, but that does not seem to be quite it.

    • ZelayaEnglish
      1•6 days ago

      How do you make it switch automatically?

      • JeenaEnglish
        1•6 days ago

        I just start writing in the different language and the suggestions + autocorrect switch for me. All the languages (other than Korean) use the same keyboard layout and for the umlauts I need to hold the aoeu shortly to get the right umlaut, or I just rely on the autocorrect.

        • ZelayaEnglish
          1•6 days ago

          Back to heliboard. I found the setting. In the languages selection, it seems it is only a toggle and to get the menu you need to long press. That needs to be fixed and put the multi language option outside.

  • @[email protected]
    12•7 days ago

    Thumb-key.

    It takes a bit to adapt and create muscle memory but I can’t change it now that I am used to it.