Technology @beehaw.org Hirom @beehaw.org 6 mo. ago

Safety in typing, no cloud needed

f-droid.org Safety in typing, no cloud needed | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository

TWIF generated on Thursday, 25 Apr 2024, Week 17Community News@linsui is forced to tap the sign:We are sad to read articles like the latest one from The Citi...

F-Droid @lemmy.ml lemmyreader @lemmy.ml 6 mo. ago

Safety in typing, no cloud needed - TWIF 25 Apr 2024, Week 17

f-droid.org /en/2024/04/25/twif.html

18 comments

Unfortunately (and incredibly) Gboard is the only keyboard that fits all my needs. I'm on graphene so I feel ok about just blocking its network access. This means voice transcription doesn't work, but otherwise I get swipe, predictions, and other languages.
- I was in your shoes for ages, but HeliBoard has predictions and other languages out of the box. Voice transcription works if you have FUTO Voice Input. Gesture typing uses a swypelibs binary extracted from Gapps; you just have to download it manually since the app never requests network access (instructions are on the Github page). I started using it today and some of its features actually seem to work better for me than Gboard, like the swipe gestures on delete or space, and it has at least a few more features I'm pretty sure Gboard doesn't. Give it a look at least.
  
  Cool, will do. It's weird to me that open boards need to pull the swype binary. Is it really that hard to replicate?
- The biggest thing keeping me from switching away from Gboard are things like the Japanese and Chinese IMEs. I have yet to find an open source keyboard with both of those, while also allowing me to switch to English.
  
  Edit:
  
  Clicked on the article. Clicked on the Trime and Fcxit5 and plugins links. It might be suitable in the future. Hoping this isn't a situation where I finally find a solution and then the devs suddenly disappear without a trace.
- I do exactly the same. It's the only Swype that works reliably for me
Are there any keyboards on f-droid that offer word prediction?

I always go back to SwiftKey (but didn't update if since they announced AI stuff) because nothing comes close, but I would gladly change it to something FOSS.
- @fri @Hirom HeliBoard is FOSS, on F-Droid, does predictions, works offline, and is actively maintained.
  
  If you want swiping, you'll have to install a proprietary Google binary though. Basically download https://github.com/erkserkserks/openboard/tree/46fdf2b550035ca69299ce312fa158e7ade36967/app/src/main/jniLibs/arm64-v8a (probably this version, although there are others for other less common processors) and add it in the HeliBoard settings.
  
  Homepage is @
  https://github.com/Helium314/HeliBoard (and it links to the page that contains that binary library, including other architecture versions).
- @fri @Hirom HeliBoard is awesome, especially if you take a few minutes to change the settings to your liking
- @fri I'm using AnySoftKeyboard. Took me a bit of getting used to and I'm probably still less efficient than I used to be, but it doesn't send what I type to remote servers to train AIs on. @Hirom
- heliboard
- @fri @Hirom
  https://anysoftkeyboard.github.io is pretty great. Many languages, customized layout, word prediction, no data reporting.
- @fri @Hirom openboard?
  
  Open board is unmaintained, heliboard is the fork, and has added some great features IMO.
I'm still looking for a keyboard with predictions which doesn't require me to change languages manually. I'm currently on Gboard as there is no decent alternative.
- I'm currently trying HeliBoard, and was about to say I also miss the multi language cabapility.
  
  But HeliBoard do have that capability, it's just not obvious to enable.
  
  Wow, okay. Thank you for this.
I'm looking for one that allows handwriting to text, if anyone knows of one.
cool! didn't know that fcitx was also available for android

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