I’m always looking for an android keyboard that is either only a number pad, or can be configured to show the number pad first by default. I have this one use case, playing farkle mostly, where I like to split screen excel and an image of the rules, and because excel is open split screen the keyboard always opens to letters. It drives me nuts that I cannot force a keyboard to open to a number pad.
I’ve got three soft keyboards enabled on my phone, to choose between as needed.
Unexpected Keyboard is my default; it’s a perfectly cromulent basic keyboard, that makes all the punctuation, ctrl/fn/esc available for comfy shell work.
When I need to type in non-ascii characters like accented letters, I have AnySoft available. And pwsafe has a soft keyboard in it to let me avoid passing my (exceedingly hard to type, long random) passwords through the clipboard.
I used to have Hacker’s Keyboard in the mix, but Unexpected Keyboard has made it unnecessary.
If you are a Florisboard user, there is a version with dynamic Material You themes here. It’s really good while we wait for the new versions with this official built-in
Wow, Openboard is a huge keyboard by default with lots of vertical key spacing. It also has two of my favorite Gboard features:
Swiping left and right on the spacebar moves the cursor left and right.
Swiping left starting at the backspace key will highlight text, then releasing the key will delete the highlighted text. However, it doesn’t pop-up the deleted text as a suggestion to let you undo it, in case you didn’t by accident.
Awesome, thanks. One last question if you don’t mind me asking. I was going to activate the keyboard on my Android phone and got a warning notification that if I did it, the keyboard wouldn’t be available to input before I unlocked me screen. But I need a keyboard to unlock my screen obviously. Could this be an issue?
Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find any alternative to gboard with good hand writing recognition for Japanese… So if you need that functionality I think gboard is your only choice
You are handwriting Japanese symbols? I use the querty keyboard that converts romaji to hiragana/kanji. However I’m afraid this isn’t available on other keyboards either…
What I dislike about ASK is how… disjointed it feels.
For example, I cannot use a mixed english+german input and have the same key layout for both languages. But I don’t want to swap between keyboards, I need one keyboard setup to do both things.
For me, the key is FOSS. I was a keen fan of swiftkey, its word predictions worked great. Then it was bought by a company that I distrust, and when I was forced to choose another, I decided to try to ensure I’d never have to switch again.
A little while after I bailed on swiftkey, the news reports came that it was auto-filling random strangers’ credit card numbers; I felt vindicated.
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Any FOSS keyboards with swipe-to-text? Always seems like they’re missing that
Openboard fork with swipe typing feels the closest to Gboard imho.
Thank you so much, I was using FlorisBoard but was missing the swipe!
Uh… Florisboard does have that though. It’s in the glide typing section of settings
Ah thank you, I must not have updated it.
Any FOSS keyboards with swipe-to-text? Always seems like they’re missing that
There’s a fork of OpenBoard that enables swipe/glide typing. It’s pretty darn good!
Just tried it, it doesn’t support swiping input. What am I doing wrong?
I’m always looking for an android keyboard that is either only a number pad, or can be configured to show the number pad first by default. I have this one use case, playing farkle mostly, where I like to split screen excel and an image of the rules, and because excel is open split screen the keyboard always opens to letters. It drives me nuts that I cannot force a keyboard to open to a number pad.
I’ve got three soft keyboards enabled on my phone, to choose between as needed.
Unexpected Keyboard is my default; it’s a perfectly cromulent basic keyboard, that makes all the punctuation, ctrl/fn/esc available for comfy shell work.
When I need to type in non-ascii characters like accented letters, I have AnySoft available. And pwsafe has a soft keyboard in it to let me avoid passing my (exceedingly hard to type, long random) passwords through the clipboard.
I used to have Hacker’s Keyboard in the mix, but Unexpected Keyboard has made it unnecessary.
Im gonna give simple keyboard a week. If it works well, I might keep it.
If you are a Florisboard user, there is a version with dynamic Material You themes here. It’s really good while we wait for the new versions with this official built-in
Wow, Openboard is a huge keyboard by default with lots of vertical key spacing. It also has two of my favorite Gboard features:
Wow, never knew of these gestures on gboard.
Thanks a lot for the info.
Yeah its awesome. I remember moving cursor with volume buttons on old cyanogen, but this is lovely
For multilingual users, which keyboards you recommend? I type in 3 languages and need a a keyboard that can have all 3 languages enabled.
AnySoftKeyboard works great for me with two languaged😄
Thanks! Is it still being supported? I see on F-droid the last update was two years ago
Yeah, there is a beta channel you can sign up for. Still no much releases but it works very well for me 😄
https://github.com/AnySoftKeyboard/AnySoftKeyboard
Awesome, thanks. One last question if you don’t mind me asking. I was going to activate the keyboard on my Android phone and got a warning notification that if I did it, the keyboard wouldn’t be available to input before I unlocked me screen. But I need a keyboard to unlock my screen obviously. Could this be an issue?
I’ve treid a few, I don’t think any of them are as good as Swiftkey sadly. Swiftkey just works, even Gboard is nowhere near as good as it.
what’s something that makes SwiftKey better?
The predictive engine and ease of entering a prediction. Quite often I can just hit space a number of times to complete a message.
Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find any alternative to gboard with good hand writing recognition for Japanese… So if you need that functionality I think gboard is your only choice
You are handwriting Japanese symbols? I use the querty keyboard that converts romaji to hiragana/kanji. However I’m afraid this isn’t available on other keyboards either…
Yes, but only for the words I don’t know the reading of. For everything else I use the T9 flick keyboard.
Anysoftkeyboard for me, it has good multilanguage support, lots of customization and even a swype option
What I dislike about ASK is how… disjointed it feels.
For example, I cannot use a mixed english+german input and have the same key layout for both languages. But I don’t want to swap between keyboards, I need one keyboard setup to do both things.
Yeah thats a real bummer to me as well, but haven’t found a better alternative yet
What keyboard are you using to get around this?
You actually can use the same layout for multiple languages. Long press enter > override default dictionary or something
OMG! I did not know this! Wow. TYVM! <3
FlorisBoard is feature rich.
Do you know if it is still under active development? It’s been one year since the last update
No releases in awhile, but there seems to be some work going on
https://github.com/florisboard/florisboard/actions
On their github they state that mayor releases take time. And there is activity on the github. So I think their working on it!
Openboard has been doing well for me.
FYI, there’s a fork of OpenBoard that enables swipe/glide typing! Literally was a game changer for me!
This is the one I’m using. It’s fantastic.
Does it do voice to text?
The only FOSS speech to text I found for English is Dicio, and it’s not amazing, but it works.
There is now an open source voice input you can install that works with open keyboard, Which as Louis rossman says in his video is actually a lot better than gboard’s
https://youtu.be/UCGaKvZpJYc?si=d3DMysA5Q_gMzQiU
Cc @refurbishedrefurbisher
@curve
Nope, not that I can see.
What are the advantages of using this apps compared to the Android Keyboard (AOSP)?
For me, the key is FOSS. I was a keen fan of swiftkey, its word predictions worked great. Then it was bought by a company that I distrust, and when I was forced to choose another, I decided to try to ensure I’d never have to switch again.
A little while after I bailed on swiftkey, the news reports came that it was auto-filling random strangers’ credit card numbers; I felt vindicated.
Thumb-key is different but great