So, up front, I’ll admit I’m one of those guys that gets hung up on tiny, largely irrelevant quirks in apps. Yeah, I’m great fun at parties.
So, what’s your favourite keyboard app? I keep coming back to SwiftKey. I feel like it’s the best typing experience for me, with fairly accurate prediction and correction — although it’s far from perfect, of course. I’ve seen plenty of people complain about it, and apart from Microsoft adding Bing to it, it’s not received much in the way of innovation or useful updates since they bought it.
I particularly like that a long press on the backspace key will delete one whole word at a time, speeding up the longer you hold it down. I simply haven’t found the backspace methods on Gboard or the Samsung keyboard (which used to be Swype I guess?) to be as predictable or reliable. Gboard’s swipe back doesn’t feel predictable in what it will do, and Samsung’s backspace is more like iOS.
I also find SwiftKey to be the best at remembering sequences of words; if I start typing my address, it’ll generally remember each successive word and offer it as the main prediction on the top row. Samsung and Gboard both do that to some extent, but I just haven’t found them to be as reliably predictable in the results.
On the other hand, I hate that SwiftKey doesn’t can’t add an image to its clipboard. Copying and pasting images is a breeze with both Gboard and Samsung’s keyboard, but with SwiftKey I pretty much have to download/screengrab and upload any image I want to insert in a chat or post.
So, that’s it. Rant over! What’s your favourite keyboard app, and does anything irritate you about it?
Any FOSS keyboard recommendations that support simplified Chinese?
Google keyboard by a mile but before that Samsung keyboard which I still love, anyway I have zero interest in trying other keyboards
I use Openboard. I migrated from iOS and found Openboard to be the most familiar, with key borders turned on in settings.
Fleksy
I use GBoard but since you asked for favorite, mine is Word Flow, Windows Phone’s keyboard. When MS killed Windows Phone they kind of ported it to iOS but never to Android.
The Windows 10 keyboard is very similar to this Word Flow and the closest I’ve been to recreate it on Android is using RBoard and the Xbox theme but since I don’t have a real reason to root I haven’t done it again, so I’m just using the regular GBoard. Also, last time I checked (few years ago) the Xbox theme didn’t have a dark mode so that’s another reason not to use it.
I’d use SwiftKey but they keys are to thin. I’ve tried using skins like the Surface Duo but still too thin for me.
Another keyboard I liked was TouchPal but I believe was removed from the Play Store for having malware, if I recall correctly.
