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?
not-so-fun-fact: since this post it seems no new contributions occured.
It’s not open source at all. But I wanted to mention I find yandex board to be much better than gboard. Swipe works well, speech to text is reliable (unlike gboard for me), and it has a nice long clipboard history.
What do you mean it’s not open source? FlorisBoard is Apache licensed, which to my understanding is is fairly permissive even for OSL.
I was writing that message quickly last night. I meant that Yandex Keyboard (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ru.yandex.androidkeyboard) is not open source. I know FlorisBoard is :)
I’ve been using florisboard for a few months now. You will have typos. Auto-correct for obvious things would be nice… once you install a dictionary its not awful, but the dictionary struggles with simple typos since it isnt usually taking rhe surrounding words into context of the misspelled word. I think the only dictionary i could get installed was from libreoffice? So could just be a lack of common mobile typos in the dataset.
Florisboard does support things i actually used from gboard like a function row up top with undo/redo, activating voice options, and a clipboard with history. It also supports things like apps that support the autofill hints similarly to how itd pop up on gboard. Of all the foss options, it was the only one that had these modern expectations, so i also think its the best bet for a gboard alternative people will actually switch to. Anysoft and openboard are way too minimal (not a bad thing, just not what an avid gboard user is looking for)
Swipe on floris is ok. It definitely triggers when you don’t want it on occasion. And the lack of autocorrect makes recovery miserable.
I tried openboard too, but i could not get openboard to a reasonable size on the screen. Pixel 7 pro is fairly big… and i use the smallest text scaling… but even the smallest layout options put the top row out of reach of my thumbs.
There was word suggestions I believe, but they pulled it back to rebuild the app, and went missing until recently
Dragon/Nuance abandoned Swype keyboard. All I want for Christmas is that they open source Swype.
