this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2025
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[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 3 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

FUTO. It's as basic and barebones as Gboard, while also having more optional features and not owned by Google.

[–] AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zip 1 points 16 minutes ago* (last edited 2 minutes ago)

I think I might have found a replacement for Gboard just now. First I found Fossify had a keyboard, but no Japanese input. Then I found one I'm gonna have to get used to that I'm currently trying out:

スミレ日本語キーボード ( Sumire Japanese keyboard )

I need to comb through settings to see if this is actually the keyboard for me, but I am liking it sk far. Really have to check if for their English QWERTY board there is a setting to bring the period to the letter section or if it is trapped with the other punctuation and make it so it automatically puts a space after doing one of their suggested words in the top bar thing.

The Japanese board is 9-key and also has a QWERTY romaji board, so I'm satisfiedright now. I personally don'tcare about the romaji board since I can read hiragana and katakana and I prefer 9-key because it's what I am used to on Gboard, but it's coolfor those that need it for any reason.

I also just learned before posting my comment that the keyboard defaults to that Japanese 9-key everytime you bring up the keyboard. Not a big deal, just another thing to learn and get used to.

Edit: switching to HeliBoard for English and switching as need be for Japanese. Just making the switch to get stuff done in a more efficient and timely manner.

[–] myfunnyaccountname@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 hours ago

I just let ai do whatever it wants

[–] zer0bitz@lemmy.world 3 points 3 hours ago

FlorisBoard

[–] shifty@leminal.space 12 points 7 hours ago (3 children)
[–] tuckerm@feddit.online 1 points 1 hour ago

Same here. The FUTO keyboard seems to have the best swiping feature among open source keyboards.

[–] Jode@midwest.social 2 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I used this for a while to get away from SwiftKey but the lack of a built in gif search function pushed me back. Dumb I know but I use it. Is there any way around that?

[–] shifty@leminal.space 1 points 4 hours ago

I just manually search tenor.com or whatever gif site and send a link or download and send as an attachment. Annoying extra step but I'm using futo due to privacy/degoogle, so I don't mind the extra work.

[–] neidu3@sh.itjust.works 3 points 6 hours ago

Installed it just now, and typing this comment via FUTO, as I've been annoyed by Swiftkey for quite a while.

[–] squirrel@discuss.tchncs.de 20 points 8 hours ago (1 children)
[–] cRazi_man@europe.pub 1 points 6 hours ago

I tried all the open source options and this seems to be the best. Still makes a hell of a lot of autocorrect errors......but still the best.

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 10 points 7 hours ago (1 children)
[–] theneverfox@pawb.social 16 points 7 hours ago (1 children)
[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 19 points 7 hours ago

You win at backronyms

[–] Tja@programming.dev 7 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

SwiftKey, as it supports 4 simultaneous languages pretty well, including diacritics and predictions. It's owned by Microsoft so I wouldn't recommend it unless you have this specific requirement.

[–] ___@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 6 hours ago

I need multilingual swipe typing support, and unfortunately nothing else comes even close to SwiftKey. AnySoftKeyboard is open source, and is pretty good for swipe support in one language

[–] Kornblumenratte@feddit.org 3 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Is it even legal to use lemmy with any other keyboard than thumb-key?

[–] mapleseedfall@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

Its simply the best. I just wished it has japanese kanji prediction

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 0 points 3 hours ago

Irregular expressions.

b̸̨̪̼̞̩͈̜̮̠̹̘̑̂̀̇́͊͋̄̊̅̚̕͜͠ȩ̷̛͔͈̼̜̜̬̼̰͖̬̓͂̀̇͑͂̈̃͛͌͆c̶̗̭̤̜̩̱͓̙͉̙̼̽̈́̐̇͗͆̕͜͟a̴̛̯͎͕̓̄̑̐͒̄̀̀̒͝ǘ̴̧̢̡̘̱̞̩̯̙͉͙̥̾̅̍͛̏̐̀̂͛̋̃̈́̚͝s̵̨̙̭͙̗͚͉̹͈̙͕̀̈́̓̀͋̋͊̓̊̚ė̶̦̦̰̭̭͚̊͒͆̑͒͒͐̊̀̆͘͠ ̸̢͓͖͚̰͕̯̫͉͍̦͙͔͉͔̂̅̾ỉ̴̬̗͎͒̕ ̴̛̟̤̘̤̝̹̲̙̤̦̱̤͌̂͊̄̆͗̇̆͊̃̍̈́̕͟͡͝LiKe To MeSs ArOuNd with👏different👏t̸e̸x̸t̸ 𝔰𝔱𝔶𝔩𝔢𝔰.

ʞuᴉl pᴉoɹpɟ

[–] Eeyore_Syndrome@sh.itjust.works 8 points 8 hours ago

On my Pixil 9?

HeliBoard.

I did DL the closed source swipe library (never know when I might need swipe type capability.)

Supplemented with FUTO Voice Input.

The clipboard/paste functionality alone is chef's kiss.

[–] tal@olio.cafe 7 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

On Android? Anysoft keyboard.

It's the best of the software keyboards available in F-Droid for general use in my opinion. It's FOSS, fairly-configuable (though I'd like to have a "macro board" where I could, in-app, assign arbitrary characters or text snippets to keyboards). It supports "splitting" the keyboard, which is nice on a tablet.

But it has some pretty substantial issues.

There's some bug it has, maybe a race condition, maybe multiple. On a slower, MediaTek-based Android device, I've seen it "miss" letters. Recently, on a faster one, I've seen it insert duplicate text when editing the middle of a word in various programs, like Firefox; I had to turn off the suggestions functionality to avoid that.

While it does have arrow keys, it doesn't support "drag left/right on the spacebar to move the cursor left/right", which is behavior that I think is very useful.

In general, with F-Droid software keyboards, I've typically found a lack of ability to input things like diacritics, often limited ability to emulate modifier keys for terminal use.

In general, I haven't really been happy with the Android text input situation. On desktop, I can use emacs, or at least use various plugins to edit the contents of a Firefox text field in emacs. On Android, I'd really like to usually go into a fullscreen editing mode with an external editor when editing text, especially given the small screen on many Android devices


I don't want to be editing text in a little text field in Firefox or whatever other app. Android doesn't really have "external editor" support, where the keyboard and editor are separate apps; it has just the software keyboard, which limits options. Maybe it's possible to implement that at the software keyboard level, have a "use external editor" option; I don't know.

[–] starlinguk@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

I've just ditched Anysoft. It hung constantly and every layout available had something missing (which was quite impressive).

[–] RodgeGrabTheCat@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

Heliboard without the google swipe library. I also use Futo Voice when I have a lot to type.

[–] guy@piefed.social 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Gboard since it can spell check multiple languages at once

[–] meekah@lemmy.world 3 points 6 hours ago (1 children)
[–] guy@piefed.social 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah? Like in the format of multiple languages in the same sentence?

[–] meekah@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

yeah, I am perfectly happy with it doing both english and german, even in one sentence sometimes

[–] guy@piefed.social 2 points 6 hours ago

Thank you, I will try it!

[–] toomanypancakes@piefed.world 3 points 8 hours ago

Fleksy, I always hunt and peck so it works well for me

[–] MicrowavedTea 1 points 7 hours ago

Sadly SwiftKey cause it's hard to find a good enough F-droid alternative with a working auto-complete. Plus ThumbKey when typing with one hand.

[–] sbv@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 hours ago

gboard. Swipe typing is great. I'd love an open source alternative that doesn't involve manually copying stuff around.