this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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The only app I can't live without. Except for gboard, all of my applications are Foss. There is no competition for gboard's swipe typing, not to mention its many capabilities like as searching for gifs, stickers, being able to paste copied images, translating, and so on. I'd like to know how I can use gboard while maintaining my privacy. According to what I've heard, it sends all typing data to Google's server. If you ask me, that's a massive no-no. Do you have any suggestions?

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[–] WhoRoger@lemmy.world 75 points 1 year ago (13 children)

Give OpenBoard with gesture typing a shot. No gifs and stuff, but gesture typing works together with suggestions, unlike either base OB or Floris. Someone casually mentioned it a few weeks ago and damn how much my life changed.

[–] UdeRecife@lemmy.sdfeu.org 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm so thrilled right now! I'm already typing this reply on OpenBoard and I'm loving it.

Gboard was also a big hurdle to my need to degoogle my phone. But not anymore!

Thank you so much. You've brighten my day. I'm both happy for knowing this and for finding about it on the fediverse.

[–] ijeff@lemdro.id 7 points 1 year ago

I just wanted to say how much I appreciate this whole vibe!

[–] mremugles@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago
[–] nulldev@lemmy.vepta.org 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

BTW that still uses Google's proprietary gesture typing library internally: https://github.com/wordmage/openboard/commit/46fdf2b550035ca69299ce312fa158e7ade36967

There's still no good FOSS alternative to Google's library though so it is what it is.

[–] WhoRoger@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Aha, that's why it's not on F-Droid. That makes sense.

Still, it doesn't connect to the internet so unless there's something very sneaky Google does in the background, it should be good?

Floris Board afaik has its own implementation of gesture typing, but that's been stuck in beta without word suggestions, so it's not really usable.

[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)
[–] WhoRoger@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's the version without gesture typing. The fork uses the same name so they can be hard to distinguish.

[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 7 points 1 year ago

Doh, my edit was slower than comment federation πŸ˜€

[–] whoopThereItIs@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

Wow this works pretty well!

[–] hombre_fundido@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

How did I not know about this?

Amazing. Thank you.

[–] makingStuffForFun@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's impressive thank you. Gesture typing with it now.

[–] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How do you gesture type with it? Slide doesn't work for me and there's no option to enable it.

[–] makingStuffForFun@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

You have to go to the settings and turn gestures on. Also this is not the fdroid version. This is the version from the link above.

[–] SGforce@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago

Wow, this is an awesome keyboard! I love the pointer moving with the spacebar.

[–] jsnfwlr@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Thanks for sharing. I've finally replaced Gboard. Now I have to adjust to the new key sizes, but at least I know my data is private

[–] WhoRoger@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

You can resize it in settings, at least the height. I have mine set to 80%. Before OB I was using GB and I recall setting it so both looked the same.

[–] Sl00k@programming.dev 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I can live with no gifs, but I can't live without emoji support :/

[–] WhoRoger@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Sl00k@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Weird I'm not seeing any options for emojis anywhere on the keyboard using S23 Ultra

[–] hombre_fundido@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

It's under 'preferences.'

[–] UdeRecife@lemmy.sdfeu.org 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Long press the enter/return button (round, with an left point arrow). It'll show you the emoji and clipboard buttons. πŸ’‘

Alternatively, you can turn on the dedicated emoji button on OpenBoard's preferences.

You can also long press the comma button. There you'll find the preferences and emoji buttons.

[–] ijeff@lemdro.id 2 points 1 year ago

If you long press the comma key on the left of the spacebar, you'll see an emoji icon on the far right.

[–] WhoRoger@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Maybe you have the key disabled, look in settings under preferences. There's a bunch of stuff you might want to tweak.

[–] diegantobass@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

VoilΓ  ! My first great piece of advice found on Lemmy! So thankful for this, and for witnessing the sudden growth of a great community here on Lemmy <3

[–] iturnedintoanewt@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm glad the word is spreading, i also found out a few weeks ago through Lemmy. The only bug that drives me up the wall is when trying to delete backwards to fix a word. It eventually eats the space to the PREVIOUS word, joining them together and making an even bigger mess. It also looks like it never got an update after September :(

[–] WhoRoger@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I guess you're using Jerboa? Apparently that's a bug between ~~WebView~~ Webkit and the AOSP keyboard (which OB is based on), or something... I don't quite get what's going on...

It actually happens on any window or app I've used, maybe they're all webview instances... Dunnow.

[–] KroninJ@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks! The only thing I don't like is that I can't have arrow keys. It's immediately better than SwiftKey for sure, so I'll adjust.

[–] WhoRoger@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can use swiping on the space bar to move left and right at least.

AnySoftKeyboard has arrow keys and more gestures, but it's not as refined overall imo.

Floris Board has gestures to move around IIRC, but not at the same time as gesture typing, and is lacking word suggestions.

[–] KroninJ@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Awesome! Using space to go left and right is good enough for me!

Thanks a ton for that. I got to really liking OpenBoard since I started using it.

[–] bug@lemmy.one 3 points 1 year ago

I've been looking for something like this for so long, thank you!