For about a decade now google has been changing shit for no particular reason, this is just the latest.
this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2025
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That's just their way they keep it alive. If it were actually good, Google would cancel it.
One thing I did notice a while back, was seeing the 2022ish interface for YouTube and Google search and feeling how dated it was, still absolutely usable mind you, just clearly with a design ethos from an older era.
Most the time, I feel that changes Google make are absolutely arbitrary, rounding a button and then squaring it again, but I need to give them credit that there is something more, something about staying at the forefront of GUIs. It's still all bullshit of course, the old one looks older but is identically useful.
The reason is their internal promotion culture. You cant get promoted without global impact, so buckle up we are changing things so we can get promoted not because it's better.
God how many things have changed on my phone that I did not ask them to. Changing the font on the clock. Changing the lock screen layout. REMOVING FROGGY WEATHER BEING BACK FROGGY YOU FUCKS.
Marketing and design teams just have to justify their existence. Makes for annoying stupid changes.
Don't get me started.
Gmail for business has been renamed at least four times.
Google Home changed layout for no particular reason and made everything an extra click away.
Google Assistant removed perfectly working actions, try turning on your A/C at 3am in the morning whilst you're sleeping.
Android changes navigation modes making everything worse.
Gmail keeps changing its layout.
Google Admin moves sections around for no reason.
Google search returns worse results every week.
Google Gemini is infecting every service.
Google Sites removed simple blogging functionality without any alternative.
Free services for life are now paid.
Google Play moved the search button to the bottom but you still have to tap at the top to type your search, so it's just an extra click.
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Basically, they have nothing else to do, so they just throw shit at the wall to see what sticks.
Sticky touchscreen for haptic feedback?
Sir, you earned yourself an extra piss break!
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The fuck? If youβre gonna change the shape of the keys, at least make them hexagons. Because as we all know, hexagons are the bestagons.
Also then the clickable area would be bigger reducing errors. I tried a keyboard that did this once. Was a rough transition, but I managed. Unfortunately I ended up going back since it was lacking some other features.
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We didn't ask for the red to pink colour fade on the Youtube playbar either but here we are...
HOLY SHIT. Thank you. That's what that is. I thought my screen was wonky or my eyesight was failing. It's not even really linear, it just looks like the last 3cm of the bar are pink
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Good time for FOSS keyboard apps to get some more love
Heliboard and Futo were the recommendations from what I remember?
Futo has been my favorite so far compared to other keyboards. I haven't used Heliboard yet, but it also looks like a good option.
I use the futo keyboard as well, but autocorrect and swiping is not good at all. correctly spelt words constantly gets changed for me, clipboard doesn't see what I copy too many times and swiping inaccuracy is too frequent.
only reason I put up with it is for the futo microphone. mic app is in a league of it's own
I had the same problem, but I found that turning up the advanced Parameter Values in the Text Prediction settings helps to keep everything spelled correctly. I'm currently at 10.4 for the transformer strength and 8.3 for the autocorrect threshold and I'm noticing a lot less issues.... I haven't tested out turning it up all the way yet.
I also have the Transformer fine tuning enabled.
The swipe feature definitely needs some attention.
They do have a crowdsourced way of helping to improve their swipe prediction, more info on the link here: https://swipe.futo.org/
You'll notice that even the swipe prediction for Heliboard comes from a closed source library.
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Heliboard is basically the same, but has the ability to add glide. Plus suggestions/corrections are already implemented, so I prefer it over Floris (which I used for months before finding heliboard)
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Circles are the worst possible shape in terms of making efficient use of the limited screen space available on a phone. The screen is rectangular and nearly everything we display falls into rectangular arrangements. Using circles just means there is less room on each key to show useful information, like the long-hold functions.
I'm not opposed to change, but change entirely for the sake of change usually produces bad results.
I'm right there with you. I hate the current trend of rounded corners on everything. I know designers say it is more aesthetically pleasing, but to me it just looks like wasted space.
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Don't use gboard, rather download a keyboard from F-Droid and avoid the keylogging :-)
Or at least use SwiftKey, and turn off mobile and wifi in app settings, something you cannot do for pre-installed apps like gboard
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Late-stage tech bros, devoid of innovation and flailing at their precious cup game.
I'm so over this garbage. RIP smartphones.
I like this. But this should be an option.
I wanna switch to FOSS alternatives but swiping is either funky (FUTO) or not available for now (Floris). I ended up downgrading gboard to an older version since all this emoji stuff (especially the bitmoji sticker nonsense) really grinds my gears.
Get Heliboard and then download a gesture library such as this: https://github.com/erkserkserks/openboard/blob/master/app/src/main/jniLibs/arm64-v8a/libjni_latinimegoogle.so
Heliboard is on F-Droid.
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Did you try Heliboard? It can be setup to swipe, though I mostly tap type. When i have used the swipe it has worked well though. I have been using it for over a year now and really like it.
Swiping seems to work fine on Heliboard (I guess because it uses the same proprietary library as gboard)
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g what? I only know Heliboard
All I want is for gboard to stop hijacking my default keyboard. I set futo for a reason and I meant it.
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I switched to Heliboard and I couldn't be more happier! It is just as good as any proprietary keyboards.
FUTO keyboard. Try it. Say bye to gboard.
I periodically try FUTO. It's a great keyboard, except for its swiping support. That seems to be gradually improving, but it isn't quite there yet. Unfortunately that is how I do all my typing, so I keep going back to GBoard. I look forward to leaving it for good.
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The keys are not even the size they are on the screen, whatβs getting drawn is just a grid of letters. Touch keyboards are far more complicated than you think.
Yeah. Iβm gonna guess this types about the same. This is probally just an aesthetic change for the appearance of being βNew!β.
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Looks awful
Kinda reminded me of this post
https://feddit.org/post/8032101
Albeit the kerning on those virtual keys are making me all itchy. Horrible horrible implementation from Google yet again when they could've done it right.
maybe the idea is that round keys will have less typos than rectangular keys that are all touching each other?
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