I just tried HeliBoard. Ditching Florisboard for now. I still think Florisboard has potential but it is undeveloped, and HeliBoard has everything you'd expect for a Gboard open source substitution. Let's go! Finally we have our first open source keyboard alternative without drawbacks!
this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
71 points (75.9% liked)
Open Source
31114 readers
1 users here now
All about open source! Feel free to ask questions, and share news, and interesting stuff!
Useful Links
- Open Source Initiative
- Free Software Foundation
- Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Software Freedom Conservancy
- It's FOSS
- Android FOSS Apps Megathread
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to the open source ideology
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
- !libre_culture@lemmy.ml
- !libre_software@lemmy.ml
- !libre_hardware@lemmy.ml
- !linux@lemmy.ml
- !technology@lemmy.ml
Community icon from opensource.org, but we are not affiliated with them.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
That's mean.
Florisboard is awesome.
It's been years without a single new feature, and it's literally lacking the most important feature of a phone keyboard.
Without auto correct, you can seperate the wheat from the chaff. /s
they are both great, but combined they would be a foss diamond of of cosmic porportions and never before reached ingenuity.
It doesn't have swipe functionality, right?
I tried it but couldn't find the option.
Go to advanced settings on your HeliBoard app and look for "Load gesture typing library" or similar. Go to HeliBoard GitHub and look for instructions on downloading the library.
Make sure the downloaded library architecture is the specified by the message you'll see when you click "Load gesture typing library".
It's just 30 seconds and you'll be gesture typing.
The library is closed source.
Well, it's the one we've got for now
It's a shame it's not open but just got around to trying this out.
It works great! Thanks for the heads up!
I am also a great fan of florisboard but the spell check being broken for over a year is kind of a deal breaker. Cause I am dyslectic af.
Requiring a proprietary blob for key functionality (pun intended) is a pretty major drawback, to me.
I know it's technically optional but it's a selling point of this software: "openboard but it supports swipe typing"
I'm in the same position because FlorisBoard will over time have all the features that HeliBoard has but HeliBoard has those already so I may switch too
OP, thank you for sharing this. I think this (Heliboard) is my new favorite keyboard that satisfies my personal requirements!!! I mean it.
And to think I almost didn't click on the post because of the title ๐คฃ...
Same I think Heliboard is the perfect replacement for gboard and Samsung keyboard.
yes replacement and improvement, but unexpected keyboard is true innovation. I really like it but for diacritics and "special letters" its just not as good. to type รข for example i need to hold a, then select the letter, whilst in unexpected keyboard I just need to swipe a upwards right.
oh I will say it again ... those two apps need to have a baby ๐
Well that's me switched over to Heliboard. I've auditioned a few but that hits the sweet-spot. I don't seem to be getting next word suggestions yet though.
edit: the suggestions are starting to kick in now.
After trying so many keyboards for years, heliboard with swipe + futo have finally made replacing gboard possible for me. I feel like it been a 90โ replacement, a far greater degree than some of the good (but not quite there) keyboards currently available. I've literally only been using it for a week (for two languages), but I'm really really happy thus far. ๐
Mind if I ask you how did you do it ?
- I downloaded the release from https://github.com/Helium314/HeliBoard and then installed.
- I downloaded the swipe library linked in the page from here.
- under HeliBoard settings -> advanced, I clicked "load gesture library" and selected the downloaded swipe library
- and for voice input, I dish l downloaded Futo from the play store.
That's it. Just setup the apps.
Thanks , it was quick to set up.
OK I'm trying heliboard now, interesting. It puts my Polish, German, English and Swedish keyboard together into one. Let's see how it'll work in the long run.
I'm especially impressed that it offers a Korean keyboard too, which I missed in all the other free alternatives. That was the main reason I stuck with the Samsung keyboard.
The multilingual support always predict words in all languages, even if you started a sentence in a specific one. And it will follow the typo rules of the first language in the list. For example, if the first language is French, it will add a space before the interrogation mark (French rule), even if you're writing in English.
Oh BTW I agree that combining it with the feature of sliding the keys would be awesome!
Unexpected Keyboard my beloved.
I can't type on any other keyboard now, the symbols are too far away.
OK - count me as another convert to Heliboard. This is what I hoped Openboard would achieve. Awesome.
Sweet. I'm pairing Heliboard with Sayboard for dictation.
Could you explain how to "pair" them?
Unexpected keyboard also has a voice dictation button, ~~could not figure out how to make use of it.~~
That's a way of saying I'm using both, they're not integrated.
When you install Sayboard, open it as a normal app, enable it in the settings following their instructions, then download the VOSK model following their guidance.
Heliboard should have a microphone btn that will open the default voice keyboard you enabled in the previous step.
On unexpected keyboard i need to swipe the enter key upwards right and it opens sayboard ๐ธ
thanks for bringing my attention to this!
Coming from Gboard, HeliBoard + Futo voice input is a pretty great. Outside of lacking emoji search and having an always visible voice key, it checks nearly all the boxes. However, it doesn't check them all. Is there any reason why I would use this combo over Gboard with network connectivity disabled?
If you want software that gives you the four freedoms (to use, share, modify, and share modified copies) then blocking network access is orthogonal to that.
The free software movement is often misunderstood as being about privacy or internet access but it's really about control over your computing, being able to make your computer do what you want, and sharing your improvements with the community.
Although, the FUTO app itself is already proprietary and the Heliboard uses a proprietary blob for swipe typing.
That's what I'm wondering too... Gboard with no network permission seems pretty ideal.