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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I’ve used MessagEase for many years now and I absolutely love it. It’s a very different kind of keyboard and so takes a while to get used to but once you’ve learned to use it properly you can type a lot faster with it on a touch screen with limited real estate.
It looks really neat, but is it still maintained?
I think so. The last update was in december -21, which doesn’t seem that far back for a keyboard app. I’ve not contacted the developer by their support channel email so I don’t know if they respond that way. I’ve personally had very few problems with it over many years’ use.
I cannot seem to find either the game app or the dictionaries on the play store.
They are still on the app store, but unlike the keyboard app itself don’t seem to be updated for modern Android devices. For example:
I’ve sent Exideas a support email asking why this is the case, so I guess when and whether they respond will be something of a litmus test of how active their support is these days. In the meantime, it seems the language modules/dictionaries can be downloaded as APKs directly from their website. They should not at all be necessary to use the keyboard, in any case.
I’ve sent them a main as well this morning. The dictionaries apk are also only available using http.
I just noticed I received a reply, two days ago:
So apparently the support is still active.
And I got a reply: “we are working on it”. This is great news, let’s see what hapens!
Ok, I am typing this with that keyboard now, and can see how this could be rather neat once one learns all thkey locations.
Does it collect/transmit the keystrokes to their server?
I can’t claim to be a 100% sure to be honest, but if the information on their privacy info page is accurate, it shouldn’t ask for any android system permissions at all, including internet access:
I installed it. Definitely very different! I’ll give it a fair shot though - looks like there’s been plenty of thought behind its design.
Nice! I hope you will like it.
I’m already liking it - I’ve switced to it as my main keyboard. I’m actually typing this on my phone (miserably slowly 😂 - it definitely needs practice getting used to.) I think it’s a good practice for the memory muscles & the brain! Thanks.
I’m also using it in blind mode save for the symbols. I really like it so far.
Glad to hear it and I hope Exideas’ admittedly questionable support won’t be a big issue going forward for you. It hasn’t really been for me - the app is pretty solid. It saddens me that novel designs like this never seem to catch on, between public inertia and established corporate actors actively trying to suppress anything new.