I could not recommend AnySoftKeyboard to my mum. I could recommend Florisboard, tho.
Openboard is virtually dead from what I can see. So that leaves Florisboard as the only open source alternative (that I know of) that could really be used by the masses. And the world would actually be a way better place if we all opensource freaks could install Florisboard on our family/friends phones and them barely noticing anything weird.
The problem is… no word suggestions yet. It’s been years and we are still lacking what is almost an essential feature of a phone’s keyboard.
I wish I could really work on it, but I lack the knowledge to do so; so I hope I am bringing some attention to the project.
Is there any other alternative I am unaware of?
Florisboard is quite great if you only input English. I can theme it with catppuccin,which is a feature I am looking for. However,I hope that it supports fcitx5 input method (specifically fcitx5-chewing). Otherwise,it is unusable for me and I will need to use Gboard.
Its great for German too and even has stuff like Arab and french, I have a Tunesian 4-lingual friend that uses it afaik
Aosp keyboard is crap but has word suggestions. So this should totally be possible.
Agree 100%, florisboard is the best.
Its insane, you can use whatever messenger or browser you want if you literally have a keylogger in front of that
Why wouldn’t you recommend AnySoftKeyboard?
I have used it for a few years. You have a ton of good setups, good language support with decent autocorrect. The only thing that is less intuitive is swiping to change keyboards and the emoji selection menu.
I guess the lack of a clipboard has burned me recently too (locked out of bitwarden because 2FA password was stored in bitwarden and the fingerprint scanner didn’t work because I added a fingerprint)
wait, how does a supposed lack of clipboard (which ASK does support) cause you to lock you out of a password manager?
They permanently store critical PWs in the clipboard? Hell no. Not even Florisboards internal one I would trust, even though assuring that is secure would be great
They permanently store critical PWs in the clipboard?
well, that sure would be an idiotic way of managing one’s credentials.
Even on latest Android, every foreground app can read “your clipboard”. That is the (like everything in Android) very basic 1-entry one. Florisboard is great if you preset the right stuff, as the internal clipboard can replace it (sync from system) but you can disable “sync to system”
Just make sure to always copy with the Keyboars and not the system popup, which UX-wise is absurd
I’ve been using “Unexpected Keyboard” for quite a while and very happy with it!
Yeah but no
The state of OSS keyboards is lamentable - no shade to devs, because most projects seem largely abandoned, except for Thumb-Key, which is exciting, active… and mostly not my bag. 8VIM is a fun version of this, but again, I’m mostly a two-thumber, so these slow me down.
Floris is almost there, except there’s little development activity, and the lack of autocorrect keeps me from using it most of the time. The clipboard is great, and the alt-key keyset is fantastic (it includes interrobang!). But the swipe is decent, and it has a 9-pad number entry which - although it can sadly not be made the default - should be mandatory.
AnySoft has some serious stability bugs that keep me from using it.
So I use OpenBoard most of the time, because its autocorrect works pretty well. It has no swiping. It has no 9-key number entry. It has no interrobang. While I like the multiple-choice paste history, most of the time the multi-step paste is just more work.
Gboard has all of these, but it comes from Google.
Keyboard development mist just be unfun; I agree with you: it’s a sad state of affairs.
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not-so-fun-fact: since this post it seems no new contributions occured.
There is a fork of OpenBoard which is pretty active the repo is on github. It release an update a day ago
