7 mo. ago • 98%

HeliBoard, a privacy-conscious open-source Android keyboard based on AOSP/now-unmaintained OpenBoard, is now available on F-Droid

f-droid.org HeliBoard | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository

Customizable open-source keyboard

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/14015786

HeliBoard keyboard is an improved fork of the now-unmaintained OpenBoard keyboard. It does not require internet permission, allowing it to be used 100% offline.

Features

Add dictionaries for suggestions and spell check

Build your own, or access them here, or in the experimental section (quality may vary)

Additional dictionaries for emojis or scientific symbols can be used to provide suggestions (similar to "emoji search")

Note that for Korean layouts, suggestions only work using this dictionary; the tools in the dictionary repository cannot create working dictionaries

Customize keyboard themes (style, colors, and background image)

Can follow the system's day/night setting on Android 10+ (and on some versions of Android 9)

Can follow dynamic colors for Android 12+

Customize keyboard layouts (only available when disabling system languages)

Multilingual typing

Glide typing (only with closed-source library ☹️)

Library not included in the app, as there is no compatible open-source library available

Can be extracted from GApps packages ("swypelibs"), or downloaded here

Clipboard history

One-handed mode

Split keyboard (only available if the screen is large enough)

Number pad

Backup and restore your learned word/history data

Hidden Functionality

Features that may go unnoticed, and further potentially useful information

Long-pressing the Clipboard Key (the optional one in the suggestion strip) pastes system clipboard contents.

Long-pressing keys in the suggestion strip toolbar pins them to the suggestion strip.

Long-press the Comma-key to access Clipboard View, Emoji View, One-handed Mode, Settings, or Switch Language:

Emoji View and Language Switch will disappear if you have the corresponding key enabled;

For some layouts, it's not the Comma-key, but the key at the same position (e.g. it's q for Dvorak layout).

When incognito mode is enabled, no words will be learned, and no emojis will be added to recents.

Sliding key input: Swipe from shift or symbol key to another key. This will enter a single uppercase key or symbol and return to the previous keyboard.

Hold shift or symbol key, press one or more keys, and then release shift or symbol key to return to the previous keyboard.

Long-press a suggestion in the suggestion strip to show more suggestions, and a delete button to remove this suggestion.

Swipe up from a suggestion to open more suggestions, and release on the suggestion to select it.

Long-press an entry in the clipboard history to pin it (keep it in clipboard until you unpin).

Swipe left in clipboard view to remove an entry (except when it's pinned)

Select text and press shift to switch between uppercase, lowercase, and capitalize words

You can add dictionaries by opening the file

This only works with content-uris and not with file-uris, meaning that it may not work with some file explorers.

Debug mode / debug APK

Long-press a suggestion in the suggestion strip twice to show the source dictionary.

When using debug APK, you can find Debug Settings within the Advanced Preferences, though the usefulness is limited except for dumping dictionaries into the log.

For a release APK, you need to tap the version in About several times, then you can find debug settings in Advanced Preferences.

When enabling Show suggestion infos, suggestions will have some tiny numbers on top showing some internal score and source dictionary.

In the event of an application crash, you will be prompted whether you want the crash logs when you open the Settings.

When using multilingual typing, the space bar will show a confidence value used for determining the currently used language.

For users doing manual backups with root access: Starting at Android 7, some files and the main shared preferences file are not in the default location because the app is using device-protected storage. This is necessary so the settings and layout files can be read before the device is unlocked, e.g., at boot. The files are usually located in /data/user_de/0/<package_id>/, though the location may depend on the device and Android version.

Planned features and improvements:

Customizable functional key layout

Will likely result in having the same functional key layout for alphabet and symbols layouts

Support for alt, ctrl, meta and fn (#479)

Less complicated addition of new keyboard languages (e.g. #519)

Additional and customizable key swipe functionality

Some functionality will not be possible when using glide typing

Ability to enter all emojis independent of Android version (optional, #297)

(limited) support for customizing all internally used colors

Add and enable emoji dictionaries by default (if available for language)

Clearer / more intuitive arrangement of settings

Maybe hide some less used settings by default (similar to color customization)

Customizable currency keys

Customizable clipboard toolbar keys (#513, #403)

Ability to export/import (share) custom colors

Make use of the .com key in URL fields (currently only available for tablets)

With language-dependent TLDs

Internal cleanup (a lot of over-complicated and convoluted code)

(optionally?) move toolbar key pinning to a setting, so long press actions on unpinned toolbar keys are available

Bug fixes

What will not be added:

Material 3 (not worth adding 1.5 MB to app size)

Dictionaries for more languages (you can still download them)

Anything that requires additional permissions

36 comments

Alright, giving it a shot now. Was getting frustrated with all the bloat Microsoft Swiftkey kept adding.

Wish you could see a preview when customizing the keyboard. Hard to do it blind.

17
- Wish you could see a preview when customizing the keyboard. Hard to do it blind
  
  That's a pretty good idea. You could check if there's any issue about it in GitHub or open one, the app is under active development and I think this is something the developers would consider implementing.
  
  2
In case you were waiting, breezy weather is now on F-droid too.

15
Hoooooob

Edit: I just tried it out and hoob is now my keyboard. I'm kinda curious what exactly the gesture typing library does since this seems to work better than others using the exact same file.

12
- It lets you glide/swipe type by just moving your finger across the letters.
  
  5
  
  I meant specifically what libjni_latinime provides to enable that. I've been using the input method since Swype first appeared and have tried probably every other attempt at it by competitors since. When I was using aosp keyboard with the file dropped in I did compare it across different versions of things you can get it from, and it seemingly hadn't changed since it appeared, with every instance of it I could find being the exact same file. What puzzles me is how the quality of swipe output has been inconsistent. Although tested over 4 different phones, I would expect some level of quality to be maintained.
  
  7
- To me it feels like it doesn't do much better than the Google keyboard. But it does follow my custom dictionary while swiping, which Google never did. After all these years it still suggested a word I never use instead of a name I type often. Heliboard just casualty does the correct thing after adding the name to the dictionary. That plus showing the detected word directly above the finger so I can keep my eyes on one spot instead of constantly checking the text for bullshit words are killer features to me.
  
  4
  
  I was getting a metric ton of outlandish words "ain't nobody use round here" and yeah the custom dictionary thing is a game changer and probably a big part of it now that you bring it up.
  
  3
- What is hoob?
  
  1
  
  just me being silly about the icon
  
  1
good to know, thanks. didnt know openboard was unmantained.

7
The link isn't working.

6
- Links works for me. Try another browser or other device ? It is also on Izzy : https://android.izzysoft.de/repo/apk/helium314.keyboard
  
  10
  
  Yeah, turn out my client needed to sync repositories. Thanks!
  
  5
It's a really solid pick. My household tablet "updated" to a nee samsung one ui, and fucked my Swype from working at all (ended up getting an updated version from xda), so I was testing the open source options.

Heliboard is the only one that's worth a damn as regards traditional keyboards. Dessalines has a thumb typing input that's pretty cool, but it's far from traditional (and I'm too old to relearn typing on a new system). Anything else is unmaintained, or just bad compared to the more popular swiftkey and gboard.

There's multilingO, which is pretty customizable, but still not updated, no matter how good it is otherwise.

5
i was still on the outdated OpenBoard, this is great. i'm using it right now

5
Thanks! I looked the other day but it wasn't on default fdroid. Getting it now :-)

5
Thanks for letting me know about this, it's great!

3
One thing no keyboard but Swiftkey seem to do properly is language detection :/

Edit: figured it out, its not very intuitive but you can add languages to other languages

3
The tactile touch has seemed to have broken itself idk why

3
- It's fixed in v1.2
  
  2
Does anyone know how to remove the number and comma button in the bottom left corner?

It's kind of redundant with how I want to set things up

2
- I don't think you can remove those buttons, because both of them give you access to more options:
  
  the numbers button changes they keyboard layout to give access not only to numbers but also to many symbols
  
  the comma button shows a pop up when long pressing for options like ”voice input, undo, redo, one handed mode, access settings...". These can be customised on the keyboard's settings.
  
  4
  
  the comma button shows a pop up when long pressing for options like ”voice input, undo, redo, one handed mode, access settings…". These can be customised on the keyboard’s settings.
  
  Can't the top row give you the same options with the > button?
  
  1
I tried it a few days but I need a single hand layout. My thumb is too short for my pixel 6.

1
- Have you tried the one dessalines made? It isn't for me, but it's a damn slick entry method.
  
  4
  
  Oh cool, thanks, I'll have a look!
  
  3
- There is a move everything to one side mode. Is that what you're looking for?
  
  4
  
  Yes! I must have overlooked that. I only saw spli keyboard... Thanks, I'll check if out.
  
  2
- Heliboard does have a single hand layout, you can access it from the top toolbar (you might need to add this button in "Settings/Preferences/Additional keys/Select toolbar keys") or by long pressing the comma. Then tap the hand icon.
  
  2
  
  Thanks for letting me know, as soon as fdroid let me download it again I'll try that!
  
  2
Please add material 3 colours.

1
You should use the version from IzzyOnDroid or use Obtainium. Heliboars is out since months.

0
- Heliboard is now also on the official F-Droid repository, people can choose any source!
  
  4

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