Thumb-Key is a privacy-conscious smart keyboard, made specifically for your thumbs.
It features a 3x3 grid layout, as many older phones had, and uses swipes for the less common letters. Initial testing shows that you can reach ~25 words per minute after a day of use.
Instead of relying on profit-driven, privacy-offending word and sentence prediction for accuracy, as do most popular phone keyboards like Gboard and Swiftkey, Thumb-Key uses large keys with predictable positions, to prevent your eyes from hunting and pecking for letters.
As the key positions get ingrained into your muscle memory, eventually you'll be able to appromixate the fast speeds of touch-typing, your eyes never having to leave the text edit area.
This project is a follow-up to the now unmaintained (and closed-source) MessageEase Keyboard, which is its main inspiration.
Err so. While I've been meaning to give money to #MessageEase for years of use, I very much dislike being forced into a subscription. Just a reminder that it is not Libre Software, and that it's not under my control and can be taken from me on someone else's whim. Particularly for something as important as my main input method.
I'll give a go to the Pro app, and see what the subscription looks like, but it feels like it's time to reevaluate @thumbkey , I guess.
Yet another subscription service for something that really doesn’t have to be a subscription. Thats why I rather donate twice as much to FOSS devs than supporting this system of fixed costs every months.
Even several years worth easily. Open Source is always way more reliable.
Long pressing to access the number layer was nice in MessagEase. That feature doesn't look available on ThumbKey.
I think I'll just bite the bullet and switch to thumbkey now. I'm not willing to subscribe to inputting.
@ook_the_librarian @kor8rok Same here...
Or give Internet access to the keyboard, even if only to check the subscription.
I miss being able to customise the keyboards with whatever symbols I wanted to add.
Yeah, that's my main gripe; my ticket request to add interrobang to one of the several open swipe spots was rejected, as was someone else's request for customizable slots. Negative interest by the dev in even accepting a PR. The proposed solution, adding yet another layout simply to add a wingle symble, baffles me. Is noone else overwhelmed by the profusion of layouts? Or the frustration of wanting one small thing from one layout, and another small thing from another, and having to choose or constantly switch between them? Such a bizzare stance.
However, despite this, ThumbKey is actively developed, and probably still tye best OSS keyboard available. And it's free, so I try to not grumble too much. Decisions like the ones above do have an impact on my willingness to financially support the project, though.
I emailed them for years asking them about source code and got nothing back. Kinda why I built this.
I've had thumb key installed on my phone for quite a while but didn't switch because it was missing some of messagease's features. Maybe this subscription nonsense will be the push I need to make a permanent switch.