It also has multiple keyboard layouts, of which "terminal" compares favorably to hacker's keyboard. I like that it is configurable, and has a lot of text editing tools when swiping space up.
I admit I lost some typing speed when I switched from the alternatives, but I'm happier with it.
Edit: thanks a lot aasasd, I had just spent a few minutes looking for it (again), without finding it.
AnySoftKeyboard also is the only open source keyboard for Android that has gesture typing. Which is something I grew to love from when I used Gboard.
I keep being perplexed when people reinvent software instead of joining forces (though I'm fine either way if the result is good). A better swipe-typing algorithm would be great, but even some smaller touches would make ASK much nicer: like, don't add a space after an opening parenthesis when swiping. Not rocket science, but needs someone to dig in the app's workings.
[0]: https://helpblog.blackberry.com/en/2013/02/blackberry-10-key...
"Let's meet at Nørreport, Lærke says she will be late."
There's also the copy paste popup that can be activated by swiping up on the space bar which offers a nice cursor based highlight/copy/paste mode.
https://github.com/AnySoftKeyboard/AnySoftKeyboard/issues/18...
Will check out OpenBoard, because this sounds like a great feature.
Is "internet access" permission just granted for any app by default without asking the user?
There were initiatives (probably 3rd party) for more granular permissions, but I haven't noticed this becoming common. I vaguely remember that Android started asking for some individual permissions not upon installation, but only when they were first used by the app, e.g. camera access. Why is this not the case for internet access?
In a nutshell, how did permission granting in stock Android develop from say Android 3.x times?
I understand that some keyboards want to provide suggestions using a dictionary they download online. Also, I used to use SwiftKey once which wanted to read all my mail to produce better suggestions. Is there even a good way to balance the benefits (features) and risks (uploading a key log if the app is sold/abandoned and taken over by an attacker)?
In practice though, it just doesn't work. I got GBoard for a while because it has a bilingual keyboard, but the autocomplete suggestions often ended up being people's first names instead of common words (and not even the people I was talking to).
Of course I speak only simple French, and those are the cases where its primitive learning is most apt. When I speak English, its suggestions are less useful, because I use a much wider vocabulary and more sophisticated sentence structure.
The same bank has a maximum password length of 8 characters, and they'll truncate longer passwords without informing the user -- set the password to "correct horse battery staple" and you'll be able to log in with "correct ". When I pointed it out they recommended setting a shorter password.
I'm just not able to launch the app while an F-Droid keyboard is set as default which is just annoying. There's many keyboards on the Play Store that I wouldn't trust to install and use.
And it has NFC payments that does not use Google Pay which is also nice.
I dug through the settings and haven’t seen anything obvious.
And it does not support having multiple languages at once which is incredibly inconvenient when you frequently have to switch between 4 languages when typing and when you often mix some of them.
But if you type without the autocorrect and the predictions, it can be great, I guess.
I use ssh a lot and all the suggestions and other bells and whistles of other keyboards are more annoyance than anything else, but i need access to all the keys that normal keyboard has.
And '/', tab and enter must be accessible all the time this is absolutely primary requirement for me to use any keyboard.
Not open-source, unfortunately.
No permissions at all is pretty impressive. The only thing I can’t figure out: How will they make money? They seem to have run a IndieGoGo campaign and now ask for donations (hidden in the settings), but that will eventually run out.
This is especially worrying with something as specialized as this.
But it shouldn't be that hard to clone, if something should happen to it.
The lack of autocorrect was so refreshing that I just kept typing for practice.
The downside now is that, unlike the QWERTY to Dvorak switch, I've become exceedingly clumsy at typing on ordinary phone keyboards.
Yes, ASK has it, but it is not at all smart about figuring out what word I mean if I happen to not start my gesture on the exactly right starting letter.
I'm using a closed source keyboard because it just works better than all the open stuff (at least when I last tried various keyboard in ~2018), but have it firewalled off completely in AfWall+. That means no updates, though it learns new words like COVID-19 well enough from me, but also no data leaking (I'd happily contribute typing stats if it were some non-profit handling my data).
I getting really paranoid...
I assume they send every word you type to their servers, but I also assume it's encrypted in transport, so it would be somewhat safe?
It's a very very difficult struggle.
We really need an full open source keyboard with some kind of Swype. Sadly I don't know any.
It seems the permission is again dropped now—but see user reviews for indication that it was indeed once used. For such a personal and important piece of software I for one will prefer an app that doesn't flip-flop on this decision—who's to say that it won't flip again tomorrow? The app is great; it being closed, not so much.
One can just check the permissions of a keyboard to see if it includes internet access. If it does, don't use it.
Also, my typing ability on mobile has been spoiled by Google's admittedly superior autocorrect. I find that many of the frequent mistakes I make are not detected or modified incorrectly on other keyboards, and have to re-learn a lot. It almost feels like vendor lock-in from bad typing habits.
[0]: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.mozc.android.inputmethod... [1]: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.gorry.android.input.nico...
If we're stuck with on-screen keyboards, please at least maximise use of horizontal space to make each 'key' as wide as possible. There's no need to copy the century-old typewriter convention.
I have a compact Cherry server-rack physical keyboard with the keys arranged in a grid and it's perfectly usable.
It has a free version, too, but the beta users were upgraded to the paid version earlier. Not opensource but doesn't even have access to the net.
Am I understand it right that swyping is a patented tech[0] and we will not see it in FOSS for at least 6 more years?
[0] http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H...
I regularly use the swipe spacebar and swipe backspace.
I never use speech or swiping
I've moved from IOS to Android 6 months ago and have been frustrated by a high % of intended alpha char keystrokes ending up as stickers culminating recently in me sending "I miss you" sticker to my boss.
If they haven't already done so since last time I checked, I encourage the FOSS keyboards to consider adding a "raise the position" of the keyboard feature.
If it is to respect privacy, it should also not have any use of CVE friendly languages, hiding possible exploits.
