Alternatives to gboard with gesture/swype style typing?

And if it weren't like that, we can also block connections with NetGuard ;)

Try this page. You have to go in to the folder that corresponds to your device, the above link takes you to the Arm chipset code which should be good for a mobile android device. You should see the raw button in the right hand corner, and the download button should be near it as well. If you're on mobile, tap the three dots and the download button should show up in the menu.

I tried two browsers and couldn't find the tiny download button. Finally, I figured it out. Follow the link from the Heliboard page, I'm using a Pixel so I opened arm64-v8a, tap the file and "view raw" should be visible. Tapping this should bring up a download window. Go into Heliboard > settings > advanced > load gesture typing library.

If you're using something like graphene OS, use gboard and deny it network permissions.

Or use another app like tracker control to deny it internet access.

None whatsoever. You're good to use heliboard with the gesture input library. There is also the FUTO keyboard, which somehow has a gesture input library built in. I would presume theirs is FOSS but I've not done my homework on this.

E: as someone else mentioned, you can deny network permission for gboard with ROMs like LineageOS, GrapheneOS, CalyxOS etc. This is what I did for many years until heliboard came along.

Try to use something like TC (TrackerControl) to restrict the internet connectivity of the app once libraries downloaded.

One of the biggest thing is the actual swipe detection success rate - I have tried heli and others and I find that you need to swipe slower and more precisely for words to register. Also, when wrong word is detected, Swype will typically have the right word suggested in bar above keyboard for a one tap correction, not the case for me on others where no word is often the wrong word is suggested to correct. For example, almost like some of them suggest too literally and lack context - this is tough to describe, so bear worth me, so I try to swipe the word "she" let's say, and the board detects "the" and the suggested words to correct have more of a relationship to "the", so think "then" "them" "theirs" maybe, but the logic isn't starting with other derivations of three letter words ending with "he" that have relevant letters near the "T" on a qwerty keyboard (which Swype feels less likely to do in my experience).

Otherwise, there are customizing options and other UI choices that I prefer with Swype. It's definitely gotten worse over the years since it stopped being actively supported, but I'm so glad it's still functional in some capacity. I wish everyone with FOSS skill would really deep to replicate the Swype experience with the APKs still floating around.