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?
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I’ve tried every FOSS keyboard out there, about a year ago or so. I’m back to Gboard.
I prefer SwiftKey. Been using it since 2011 or so. I tried gboard and it’s… Fine? I mainly use SwiftKey for a few reasons:
- I prefer the minimal theme that I’m using.
- I’ve used it forever
- I like the way it handles gifs and emojis
- Swiping for punctuation is extremely quick. I dislike having to hold it on other keyboards.
I wholeheartedly agree with the swiping punctuation. That and swiping on the space bar to switch keyboard configuration is the main reason for sticking to SwiftKey. Writing in several languages where you need special characters in each language, having to hold down a button in order to switch the keyboard is frustratingly slow.
One extra point is also that SwiftKey inserts the most likely prediction when clicking space. Whenever I’ve used gboard, it’s so frustrating, that my fingers have to click the prediction in order to insert it.
I’ve tried so many other keyboard, but stick with SwiftKey because of the swiping punctuation next to the space bar. I just can’t get used to anything else.
It’s so habitual at this point and I was really frustrated when something else wouldn’t do that.
Adding a comma or a question mark on iOS is maddening when you’re used to SwiftKey.
SwiftKey. There’s some things I don’t love about it, but I’m trapped by swipe punctuation and predicting emoji from words. Every so often I get mad at SK and try something else, but it never lasts.
Hahaha, this is me. Nailed it.
I’m trapped by swipe to delete. I know others have it but with limitations like swipe from the backspace key. Years of swiping left anywhere on the keyboard to delete a word has made it impossible to use anything else.
I’ve tried many, but I always come back to SwiftKey. It was one of the things I missed the most when I tried iOS for some time (SwiftKey on iOS sucks).
I have tried so many keyboards, FOSS one included but nothing is as refined as Gboard without internet access.
How do you disable internet access for Gboard?
Something like Netguard or RethinkDNS will work. Basically an app that creates a firewall using the VPN slot.
Kinda loving florisboard atm
Kinda unfortunate it hasn’t been updated for a very long while.
Every few months I keep re-trying SwiftKey and the Samsung Keyboard, but I keep going back to GBoard because when I swipe it gets it right a lot more of the time than the other two.
Grammarly bc it makes really good suggestions bc i word oorly.
I’m the same way regarding quirks. I’ve been using Gboard and for a while bounced between that and Samsung Keyboard. Gboard has the best overall usability for me but a couple things I’m not a fan of: Gboard deleting clipboard history (only from Gboard as it’s still available elsewhere), and including \ as a long press symbol rather than /,where you have to tsp the symbols key and then tap /.
Samsung Keyboard has a few quirks as well, but the biggest was predictive text isn’t as good as Gboard. But I like the customization of it. But I can’t see the symbols on the keys as well as I can on Gboard.
I was a fan of Chroma Keyboard years ago because I liked that it would change color based on the app.
Since the 99% of the available keyboards doesn’t have the Ctrl key for some weird reasons, my options are pretty limited.
For a long time I used BlackBerry Keyboard, but after an update the prediction got abysmally bad.
Now I use Unexpected Keyboard with some modified layout. Doesn’t have any dictionary or prediction, but has all the keys I need.
I use Florisboard with a custom M3 theme. If I remember I tried a bunch of keyboards and ended up sticking with FlorisBoard.
I also like Florisboard for the customizability. Hoping it gets next word suggestion features soon.
Yeah, I also do wish the glide typing was a bit more accurate.
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.
Gboard
autocorrect and suggestion are great both in English and French and the performance is smooth af
Previously I was using Swiftkey because at that time the Google keyboard wasn’t supporting multiple language simultaneously but Swiftkey’s performance was extremely bad. As soon as Gboard added simultaneous multi language support, I switched and never looked back
Coming from SwiftKey, I’m trying Gboard just now,but how fo you survive that it doesn’t support auto-space after punctuation in anything but US English? I have Danish as my layout, with English as the second language.
It’ll for sure take me some time to get used to.
I miss SwiftKey’s long press to delete a word (though the swipe left from backspace might be learned, and elike the easy access to parentheses)
It messes with me that the word that’ll be inserted when I press space is not always the middle suggestion.
It annoys me that I can’t get rid of the mic button, despite having disabled voice.
YES! I don’t get why it supports auto-space after punctuation only in US English. I mean… seriously? After all these year. If they want, I can implement it for them.
Exactly!
you actually can get rid of the mic button now. You can customize the entire top bar
Ok, I did that just update over night? Yes, I can remove all the icons! Nice! Thank you!
I tried SwiftKey for about a week or so a month ago but I’m too used to GBoard to make the switch.
What I like about GB that SK doesn’t have or is too different:
- speech to text integrated into the keyboard. The Bing app is probably the best at this, especially for my non-native English accent, too bad SK doesn’t have its own implementation
- I can set up the keys to show their long press symbols
- the colon character is at an awkward place for my finger to reach
- GB’s swipe function can figure out much more easily what language I wanted to type in
- SK shows every possible accented version of the character that I long pressed on, and the one that I wanted was usually at an awkward place to reach. GB on the other hand sorts those of my native language right next to the original character, and only offers a few that I never use.
SwiftKey does your first two bullets and has full on Bing chatgpt built into the keyboard including getting it to compose messages for you and gives you options to rewrite your messages in different tones like professional, casual, funny, etc.
I feel like most of your issues with swiftkey could be fixed by playing around around with themes/settings a bit to find what fits your needs.
It seems like you were right, it was the theme that I chose that didn’t support showing the long press symbols, even though I enabled them in the settings.
Regarding the voice to text, for me it just opens Google’s voice input, it doesn’t seem like it has its own built in VTT.
