I came across everyday topic on Techlore Discussions about free and open source keyboards for Android and discovered this little gem. It is FlorisBoard, a virtual keyboard for Android which respects privacy of the user. I can sigh with relief and finish my search for that singular keyboard for typing stuff on the go.
It has everything I need and more.
- Multilanguage support: detailed layout options, popular presets
- Swift and glide typing experience
- Customizable gestures: switch language by fast swiping the keyboard itself left and right, change case by swiping up, the infamous cursor swipe on space bar
- Emojis
- Clipboard
- Smartbar: quick actions and clipboard cursor tools
- One-handed mode
- Other look-and-feel settings
Why are the versions of FlorisBoard and OpenBoard, available on F-Droid so old? I really don’t like to download important apps from a github release page and keep everything updated manually…
They haven’t been updated in a while. Luckily there is a fork of openboard that is being updated and works quite well: https://github.com/Helium314/openboard You can easily install and update it with Obtainium.
The other problem with FOSS keyboards is that development always dies off with no more updates.
This makes it a non starter for me
Exactly because the thing is FOSS, that becomes possible for more people with enough qualifications to resume it. In proprietary case, only very limited circle gets to touch the source code. We’re probably witnessing a curse with virtual keyboards in FOSS, like some niche kinds of software…
Why not just Simple Keyboard?
It was abandoned for almost a year, glad to see commits picking up again. Though the latest beta/stable releases are still incredibly outdated and broken, so not really in a usable state with the incomplete auto correct.
Swipe typing is not great. I come back to it every few months to try it again and always end up frustrated. It’s good if you are a tap typer, though.
This is my problem with every keyboard (FOSS or otherwise) since Swype finished. Gboard is the best of the bunch now but I’m loath to use it. I have tried Floris and Open (a fork of it which has swiping) and others, and they are all painful on this front.
