Gboard is getting visibly worse almost on a daily basis, especially autocorrecting perfectly legitimate words, presumably based on dubious analysis of other people’s writing. So what’s worth trying? The ability to swipe type is a big plus
Gboard is getting visibly worse almost on a daily basis, especially autocorrecting perfectly legitimate words, presumably based on dubious analysis of other people’s writing. So what’s worth trying? The ability to swipe type is a big plus
I’ve been putting up with Futo keyboard for privacy reasons even though it’s not better than Swiftkey which has had the best predictions by far and had served well for many years
You can help improve and contribute your swipe typing data by swiping some sentences on their website: https://swipe.futo.org/
Are there any privacy considerations if swiftkey is restricted from internet access?
I am looking for a privacy friendly SwiftKey alternative, so I will give it a try. Seems like there is sadly not much alternative.
If you go with FUTO keyboard, do these as soon as you download it:
If you do these things, it will - eventually - figure out your typing habits. But it’s worth it. I’ve been using it for a month or so and, outside of some odd quirks, it’s working pretty well. Even has a clipboard manager and a “paste” button (for fat-fingerers like me), among other neat tools.
Oh, and don’t forget to drop it into Obtainium so it can be updated, as it’s not offered through any app store.
Can you elaborate?
Autocorrect will either “fix” common words into something else, or outright refuse to fix super common typos. You have to delete suggestions that you know you will never use, and add words and abbreviations (I use “appt” a lot, for example, the keyboard used to correct it to “and”).
This may be common knowledge for a lot of you, but some people don’t realize that you can tweak those things.
Can Futo handle three languages at once? That’s why I am still on SwiftKey.
That’s a good question to which I don’t have an answer. I’m very much a single-language person.
No worries, happy for you. I installed and tested it. Pleasantly surprised that it can do many languages and many layouts, even obscure ones like Colemak-dh.
But several languages don’t have autocorrect and you’d have to find (or create) then install a language file manually. Reasonable given the alpha version, but not good enough for me yet.
Have you experienced a battery life hit when using the transformer tuning feature? It warns that it has a major impact so that’s why I didn’t turn it on.
The transformer tuning only runs when charging. Which causes a major slowdown and heating issue on my phone. So, apart from that and some latency issues in demanding apps due to nature of the LLM prediction it is alright.
Not really. I saw the warning as well, but just went for it. Haven’t noticed a difference.
Futo looks good! It’s the emoji prediction that kept me hooked to SwiftKey. Anyone know the word that will suggest the 😘 emoji? Kiss and heart suggest others. (I know it’s a little cringe, but my partner and I use it a lot in messages so I need it to be convenient.)
I just got futo from Google play store.
I would delete that and get it either from F-Droid (I just learned about the F-Droid listing last night), or grab the APK from FUTO directly.
Try to stay away from the Play store when it comes to privacy-related stuff like this.
Why
Play store is a privacy nightmare. Apps you get from there are not quite the same as their non-play store equivalents, even if it’s technically the same app. Nextcloud, for example, just went through this with their Play store version. Google recently forced them to remove the “all files access” permission… You know, the entire point of Nextcloud? But the non-Play store version that you can get from F-Droid still had that permission intact.
Luckily Google backed down from the totally-couldn’t-forsee-this backlash, but still. Google puts arbitrary limitations on what can be uploaded there, and FUTO keyboard is no exception.
There are plenty of alternatives, they’re just all terrible