Damus
Danie profile picture
Danie
@Danie
HeliBoard is a privacy-conscious and customisable open-source keyboard for Android

This is a very feature packed and functional keyboard. I've found its word suggestions as good as GBoard and other Big Tech keyboards. I managed to import an Afrikaans dictionary and HeliBoard handled multilingual typing well.

There are also quite a few layout tweaks that can be applied, it can pop up more word suggestions, clipboard history, do split keyboard, etc. Interestingly too, in the About menu there is a page that shows a description of hidden features that may go unnoticed. That is a nice touch, and shows how much attention has gone into this keyboard.

It is open-source and fully private, but even has a toggle to enable incognito mode to cut off features such as learning words.

It is not available on the Android store so you either install the APK from their GitHub site, or install it from F-Droid or IzzyOnDroid stores. Their GitHub project has 5.6k stars. The project is about 3 years old and has 67 releases so far, the last one being yesterday. So good to see it is actively maintained by 57 contributors.

It's now my daily driver as a keyboard (you that keyboards can potentially monitor every single thing you type, and cloud connected keyboards that sync your learnt words are all reporting to someone else's home).

See https://gadgeteer.co.za/heliboard-is-a-privacy-conscious-and-customisable-open-source-keyboard-for-android/
#android #opensource #privacy #technology

2
Danie · 3d
FUTO keyboard is an excellent alternative with good theming and better text prediction due to local language model inclusion. Its source code is fully open, but not free to re-use for commercial purposes. It is therefore in Google Play Store and not F-Droid.