Heliboard. Works lovely, got all the features, looks nice, is FOSS and can cure cancer if applied correctly. Not sure about the latter and I also just made it up.
this post was submitted on 20 May 2026
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Asklemmy
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Heliboard user. Don't have cancer, so I'm curious how that'd work?
I particularly like that I can have an English UK keyboard with German umlauts and German AND english dictionaries.
See? It seems to work!
But yeah me too, the mixture us mixed speakers need is neat 😁 use the same constellation too BTW.
thumb-key made by one of the creators of lemmy.
I use the FUTO keyboard.
Alternatively gboard
So if you are a ride or die swipe user, the only real alternative is heliboard with the google library? I vaguely recall someone saying you could use microsoft keyboard but then use a firewall to block it from phoning home?
AnySoftKeyboard has swipe support able to be turned on, it is full FOSS.
Has 50-60 languages supported.
Irregular Expression
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FUTO Keyboard is what I've been using for a while. It's no where near as good as Gboard, but it also isn't stealing literally everything I type.
well, GBoard is definitely the best,
but I use heliboard because it's open source.
+1 for heliboard.
GBoard has good recognition, but I'd rather my keyboard didn't just siphon off whatever I type.
this. HeliBoard is quite good, it even has theming options to make it cute if you want to
This seems to be kind of the consensus. I'm not interested in moving from one theiving shitstain of a company to another. So gboard is a no-go.
I can't get voice input to work on Heliboard though. The option is there in toolbar settings, but the button doesn't show up on the toolbar and there's no microphone permissions...
FUTO voice input, I use for voice. It seems to work fine so far. But that isn't (F)OSS, just source available.
Thanks! That seems to integrate into Heliboard nicely, activating with the voice button that's now on the toolbar where I expected it.
I wasn't expecting this to be two separate components/apps, but I guess that makes sense.
I wish they had support for CJK languages too.
Heliboard is excellent
Ditto
HeliBoard free and open source
Oh no, no swiping?
AnySoftKeyboard for FOSS swiping.
You can get Google's swipe type library and load it into heliboard
https://github.com/HeliBorg/HeliBoard?tab=readme-ov-file#features
Many thanks
Edit:
Quite a bit more work than expected lol. It tells you where the libraries and dictionaries are not not how to load them. I figured it out in the end but can't seem to find out how to load the emoji list. Sometimes they show up in suggestions
i really like https://f-droid.org/packages/juloo.keyboard2 with dvorak
Unexpected keyboard allows to use pc shortcuts and makes usage of special characters fast without additional space and dvorak i use because its better in any way and phone games dont force input layout
Heliboard
This is really trippy, just today I also got pissed at Swiftkey for the onedrive bs. I've just installed HeliBoard after many recommendations I on other threads.
So far it works really well but took me some time to set up how I like it. I'm getting used to having 0 typing data though and it not autocorrecting my awful typing so I have to type out slower and more back tracking to fix my fat thumbs pressing the wrong letters.
Do you have to do something to make voice input exist?
It's listed as an option in the toolbar settings but the button doesn't appear on the toolbar. Even with everything else disabled and just the voice input button enabled: the toolbar is totally empty...
There's also no microphone permissions...
On my keyboard, there's an arrow pointing to the right like this: ">" in the top left corner.
When I click that it opens up my toolbar which has the microphone symbol. If I click that it opens the google microphone and that's as far as I want to go as I don't use voice to text ever.
If you don't see that symbol, you may need play with the settings but I wouldn't have enabled it purposely so it should be there by defaul.
That icon didn't show up until I installed another voice app. FUTO voice is what I'm using now alongside Heliboard. Seems to work nicely so far.
You can try Sayboard, works well for me (even if it hasn't been updated for a while)
I like Unexpected from the F-Droid store but takes a little bit to get used to it.
This is a great secondary keyboard to keep installed so I can quickly swap to it when I am doing something where I need a lot of special characters or complicated cursor placement or something. For general use, I tend to prefer Heliboard, but there are a few things that Unexpected Keyboard is just much better at.
used to use anysoft keyboard, but development seems to have died a while ago. so I got on the heliboard train like many others. preferred anysoft because of flexibility, but heliboard is open and works well enough.