this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
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Privacy

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I've been using SwiftKey for over a decade now, and I didn't really realize how potentially horrible it is for privacy. What are some good alternatives you guys can suggest, ideally open source?

My ideal keyboard includes swipe to type and a notepad (to paste certain emoticons like shrug emoji and such).

Thank you!

Edit, for any future lemmings/internet people who want the definitive answer (so far, as of October '23), OpenBoard works great.

Download the latest release apk from here

And if you want swipe typing as well,

Download the "libjni_latinimegoogle.so" file onto your phone from here

Then when you open OpenBoard, go to Advanced and select "Load gesture typing library". When it asks you to select a file, select the "libjni" file and swiping should work just fine.

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[–] bledley 35 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Unfortunately Gboard is still the best around. Block it's internet access.

[–] 84615_on_resu 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think that Gboard would still find a way to connect to the mothership.

[–] bledley 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes probably. It's a compromise and not ideal. I revoke internet access and on Graphene OS not tied to a Google account. We all find our own peace with this kind of thing. Florisboard looked very promising but the swipe text wasn't implemented last I checked.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Florisboard appears to have been abandoned

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I'd love to love Florisboard, but it doesn't make it easy. Swiping feels great, but it's dearly missing autocorrect/suggestions and the word recognition is so bad that typing is faster at least 80% of the time, which defeats the purpose.
I hope it gets better in the future.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Sadly, seems so. They have swipe now but they don't have an autocorrect.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So one of the suggestions was to use Invizible Pro to block it's access. Do you use the same method?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

GrapheneOS has a built in firewall but yeah anything that creates a firewall should work.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I see. Thanks!

[–] aubertlone 1 points 1 year ago

Wanted to add my perspective. Decided to splurge and get the z fold 5 after rocking the OnePlus 7 pro for 4+ years now. Wouldn't have upgraded except I cracked the shit out of my OnePlus recently and repairing/replacing just wasn't worth it.

After using this phone for a couple days, I have having serious thoughts about returning it. Spent so much time customizing the keyboard for the main screen, but just couldn't find a comfortable typing experience. Then I realized I hadn't installed GBoard yet. As soon as it was loaded, I was off to the races. No customization required. Very comfortable typing experience now with the default settings.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can you still use GIFs and stuff like that if you block its access? Seems like it would be better if we had an equivalent of a hosts file on Android to block or redirect certain addresses.

[–] bledley 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

can't access the GIFs panel without internet access..just standard emoji..I don't use those anyway so can deal with that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It's no better than SwiftKey for privacy though, is it?