I came across everyday topic on Techlore Discussions about free and open source keyboards for Android and discovered this little gem. It is FlorisBoard, a virtual keyboard for Android which respects privacy of the user. I can sigh with relief and finish my search for that singular keyboard for typing stuff on the go.
It has everything I need and more.
- Multilanguage support: detailed layout options, popular presets
- Swift and glide typing experience
- Customizable gestures: switch language by fast swiping the keyboard itself left and right, change case by swiping up, the infamous cursor swipe on space bar
- Emojis
- Clipboard
- Smartbar: quick actions and clipboard cursor tools
- One-handed mode
- Other look-and-feel settings
Swipe typing is not great. I come back to it every few months to try it again and always end up frustrated. It’s good if you are a tap typer, though.
Swipe typing is brutal
It needs to be so precise!
This is my problem with every keyboard (FOSS or otherwise) since Swype finished. Gboard is the best of the bunch now but I’m loath to use it. I have tried Floris and Open (a fork of it which has swiping) and others, and they are all painful on this front.
Genuine question: is there any way for any keyboard application to be privacy disrespecting if their internet access is blocked off by a firewall?
I’m going to take a guess and say that it might be possible for it to still be, for example GBoard may share info with the other Google apps who then share it with the world.
Otherwise, if it’s completely blocked from the outside world? Definitely not.
Do you know if there is any way to check and potentially also block inter-app communications like that?
I’m sure there’s some way to monitor that using ADB or another tool, but at that point you’re wasting so so much time that you should just get an open source trusted app.
This is the open source community, not the privacy community. Privacy isn’t the only reason to prefer free software. Some of us enjoy having the four freedoms.
Why isn’t it on the play store, does that cost the developer?
I hope to impose a better question: why would it not cost the developer? $25 may be a steal for some, but I don’t think a proprietary store really deserves so much attention from primarily FOSS developer.
I’d like to use it by my phone is supplied by work and blocks side-loading. Oh well.
This is terrible news. :( Sorry to hear that work makes you download from proprietary store front. I suppose, expecting phones with LineageOS, CalyxOS, GrapheneOS, etc given for work purposes is a bit much at this moment, but at least side-loading should be provided if we’re to avoid monopoly. To me, it’s never healthy if organization is fixated on using only the single app kit for everything.
Why are the versions of FlorisBoard and OpenBoard, available on F-Droid so old? I really don’t like to download important apps from a github release page and keep everything updated manually…
They haven’t been updated in a while. Luckily there is a fork of openboard that is being updated and works quite well: https://github.com/Helium314/openboard You can easily install and update it with Obtainium.
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