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I came across everyday topic on Techlore Discussions about free and open source keyboards for Android and discovered this little gem. It is FlorisBoard, a virtual keyboard for Android which respects privacy of the user. I can sigh with relief and finish my search for that singular keyboard for typing stuff on the go.

It has everything I need and more.

  • Multilanguage support: detailed layout options, popular presets
  • Swift and glide typing experience
  • Customizable gestures: switch language by fast swiping the keyboard itself left and right, change case by swiping up, the infamous cursor swipe on space bar
  • Emojis
  • Clipboard
  • Smartbar: quick actions and clipboard cursor tools
  • One-handed mode
  • Other look-and-feel settings
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[-] BitSound@lemmy.world 35 points 1 year ago

Oh neat. Development had died down, but looks like it's picking back up again and the creator is finding more maintainers. It's what I use on my phone.

[-] xvlc@feddit.de 20 points 1 year ago

Here, the developer explained why development activity decreased:

While it is true that due to private reasons I had to take a bit of a pause of developing FlorisBoard and some time passed with no progress at all, implementing a completely new statistical NLP (Natural Language Processing) provider, or in laymans terms the long-awaited word prediction and spell-checking implementation, is also a huge task which takes a lot of time and trial-error and development time.

[-] folkrav@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 year ago

Yeah I had given up on the project and had settled on OpenBoard for now, but if/when the word suggestions ever land, I'll gladly jump over. I don't dislike OpenBoard per se, it's actually pretty decent, reminds me of older AOSP when it was a bit more naive, but I really miss swipe typing.

[-] vaselined@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago
[-] folkrav@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Iiiinteresting. Will test that out. Thanks!

Edit: works great! Thank you so much.

[-] beyond@linkage.ds8.zone 4 points 1 year ago

Note that this fork relies on the proprietary Google library to do this. It's not really an alternative.

[-] spez@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

Didn't know they did releases. Thank you!

[-] TheSun@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 year ago

You should give AnySoftKeyboard a spin. Has word suggestions that are really good and the swiping works really well too

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[-] furzegulo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 year ago

makes want to learn kotlin, so i could contribute

[-] rufus@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Why are the versions of FlorisBoard and OpenBoard, available on F-Droid so old? I really don't like to download important apps from a github release page and keep everything updated manually...

[-] Knusper@feddit.de 10 points 1 year ago

F-Droid has the most up-to-date versions (v0.3.16 and v1.4.5). Both of these just haven't seen a release in a while, although the FlorisBoard developer seems to have recently returned.

[-] uuhhhhmmmm@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
[-] glacier@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 year ago

They haven't been updated in a while. Luckily there is a fork of openboard that is being updated and works quite well: https://github.com/Helium314/openboard You can easily install and update it with Obtainium.

[-] SnokenKeekaGuard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 year ago

I always loved swipe typing so much, its the one non foss thing i miss so much. Currently typing off of florisboard, but until we have word recommendations (next big release i think, tho probably a long ways away still) and even a little better swipe typing I cant say a gboard foss alternate is good enough.

Funnily enough i loved keypass 2 androids built in keyboard and would use that if the ui was better, plus swipe typing again. Atleast florisboard can understand most longer words.

But having tried every foss keyboard I can comfortably say, i like floris board the most.

[-] CannotSleep420@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 1 year ago

I've found AnySoft keyboard to have decent enough swipe support as well as word predictions. The only complaints I have about it is that the keyboard sometimes shrinks to a weird size if you use autorotate and its word predictions don't support contractions.

[-] TheSun@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 year ago

Have you tried AnySoftKeyboard? It has solid word predictions and the swiping works great... available on fdroid

[-] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 1 points 1 year ago

Not OP but AnySoftKeyboard's word prediction is not as good as GBoard's. Especially when you need to use two languages, there nothing even comes close to GBoard unfortunately.

I have, can't remember what I didnt like there lol. Its been a while

[-] Penguinblue@kbin.social 11 points 1 year ago

Swipe typing is not great. I come back to it every few months to try it again and always end up frustrated. It's good if you are a tap typer, though.

[-] NathanUp@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago
[-] txtsd@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

It needs to be so precise!

[-] vintprox@kbin.melroy.org 1 points 1 year ago

What you guys call "swipe typing" is actually a glide typing, right?

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[-] sayitghoul@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

The other problem with FOSS keyboards is that development always dies off with no more updates.

This makes it a non starter for me

[-] loki@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago

There are a lot of "open source enthusiasts", but not enough "open source contributors"

[-] vintprox@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

Exactly because the thing is FOSS, that becomes possible for more people with enough qualifications to resume it. In proprietary case, only very limited circle gets to touch the source code. We're probably witnessing a curse with virtual keyboards in FOSS, like some niche kinds of software...

[-] hdzki@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

FlorisBoard kinda died off for a year as patrickgold tried to implement statistical NLP suggestions. Thankfully, quite recently he opened up developments for contributors and people looking to help with the project on a long-term basis.

[-] mojo@lemm.ee 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It was abandoned for almost a year, glad to see commits picking up again. Though the latest beta/stable releases are still incredibly outdated and broken, so not really in a usable state with the incomplete auto correct.

[-] library_napper@monyet.cc 6 points 1 year ago

Is there any way to tap on a word after typing a message (while proofreading before sending) and get alternate suggestions?

The absence of this is why I left FlorisBoard.

[-] FurtiveFugitive@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

Doesn't appear so in the version i just grabbed from fdroid.

[-] cyberwolfie@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago

Genuine question: is there any way for any keyboard application to be privacy disrespecting if their internet access is blocked off by a firewall?

[-] kattenluik@feddit.nl 8 points 1 year ago

I'm going to take a guess and say that it might be possible for it to still be, for example GBoard may share info with the other Google apps who then share it with the world.

Otherwise, if it's completely blocked from the outside world? Definitely not.

[-] cyberwolfie@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Do you know if there is any way to check and potentially also block inter-app communications like that?

[-] kattenluik@feddit.nl 1 points 1 year ago

I'm sure there's some way to monitor that using ADB or another tool, but at that point you're wasting so so much time that you should just get an open source trusted app.

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[-] wolre@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

May try it out if I can get over the fact that I won't have multi language support without switching manually anymore. I've been trying to move away from SwiftKey, but as someone who typed regularly in 3 (occasionally 4) languages and switches between them quite a lot, it's a feature that I'm not sure I can live without. So far I haven't seen any FOSS keyboards supporting multi language in such a seamless way.

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[-] Mars2k21@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I've been using it for a couple years now. It's been a good experience, and it works completely as a keyboard. Customization is great, and there are a lot of implemented features thay have made it my go-to Android keyboard.

I switched from Gboard since I wanted to use an open source alternative for something as simple as a keyboard. It works fine as a basic keyboard, although its a bit unpolished otherwise. Swipe typing is buggy and there hasn't been many updates recently. I don't expect a ton from an open source keyboard to begin with, but this one provides a lot and could be even better if it starts being developed often again. It feels unfinished in its current state.

It used to have text suggestions, but now they are gone for me. Not sure what happened. I'd have to check again, but I'm not sure if they were taken out a while back or something.

Flawed, but it its awesome to have an open source keyboard with this much capability.

[-] interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

Adios gboard !

[-] otter@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago

Looks great! I love how customizable it is.

Some features that I still like having though include the built in translation and gifs with google keyboard.

But that's pretty much it at this point, everything else is so solid. I might switch over soon

[-] Acamon@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Does it do emoji predictions? I've got a few relationships that use a lot of emoji in chats, and the ability tomjusy type 'salute', 'sad', 'kiss' etc and get the emoji without scrolling through a library is what's keeping me on Swiftkey.

[-] vintprox@kbin.melroy.org 1 points 1 year ago

Sadly, not yet. (Also missing this feature.)

[-] h_a_r_u_k_i@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

Cool. Now I just needs a Japanese keyboard and I can finally ditch Gboard.

Just downloaded it to try. Seems pretty good so far

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this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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