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

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

34 comments

Note: If the link isn’t working for you or if you can’t find the app, update the default F-Droid repository in your F-Droid client.

12
- are you the developer? if so I have a suggestion
  
  Please add a paste button. There is is seemingly no OSS keyboard that does this. I am so tired of long pressing and then pasting and then sometimes it highlights a word instead, so tiresome
  
  3
  
  There is already a paste button, although not directly shown. I can access it in 3 different ways (but I have made some changes to the default settings, so it might not be exactly the same for you):
  
  on the toolbar on top of the keyboard (you need to extend it by tapping the > button on the top left). You can customise the buttons that show up here in "Settings/Preferences/Additional keys/Select toolbar keys"
  
  by long pressing the comma key (my favourite way), a pop up shows with several keys, among them the paste key.
  
  by long pressing the enter key
  
  5
Writing with it right now. I think i just disabled gboard for good.

11
- Finally!
  
  1
Just downloaded! Now I use F Droid and this keyboard! It's pretty neat looking and I like it

11
There are lots of privacy-friendly keyboards but many only implement English and some very basic features. However, this one does it all.

8
Definitely check out the Hidden functionality part of the readme (it's also in this post's body)

7
dude I've been using it for a couple of days. I absolutely love this. I even found the setting to use an image as a background and it works great! this is my all time use keyboard now. was very happy to get rid of Swiftkey.

6
This needs more contributors FYI. There's a ton of issues and feature requests

4
With a little customization I able to generally get a setup I liked except for a persistent terminal-friendly top row from AnySoftKeyboard (Ctrl, Tab, |, /, Arrows left, up, down, right, Esc). I don’t do too much terminal work, but when you do, it’s so handy—but eventually I noticed how handy it was outside the terminal as feature like Ctrl+V or arrows being faster than using menus or long pressing the screen. Tab is really great for typing accessible code snippets too.

It’s a bit sad the dictionaries are held on a pirvacy-respecting, German nonprofit-held, free software Codeberg repository, but the main repository is tied to the US-based, megacorporate, proprietary repository. Not even a mirror.

The biggest selling point is how unlike AnySoftKeyboard, you don’t need to get an Android+Java environment setup just to add or tweak a new keyboard. Being a JSON file & having many to-JSON options, users are hardly shackled to a specific or difficult-to-work-with option. Even if not perfect, ultimately I might give this a fulltime go when I have time to write out the three language keyboards I need—which is not a phrase I could say about other options since the time to set up for & learn the basics for Android was a task too large.

3
How do you do the multilingual typing? I often switch between my native language and English.

3
- Disable the "use system language" setting and choose your native language. You can then add English to your native languages layout as a secondary language.
  
  7
Now after a day of intense testing, I got to say the keyboard is great. It has everything I needed to switch away from gboard. Even background image function and translucent keys and dual language. I really hope this project is maintained forever, that's how good it feels to use this keyboard.

3
- Thanks, this is basically all I needed to hear. Im gonna try it out immediately.
  
  3
  
  Some options are a bit hidden and you got to tinker a bit to understand what keyboard layout you want, but it's all there.
  
  3
I want to love it, but the swipe feature using the external library is OK (worse than Gboard) for English, but horrible for Spanish. I have to correct every other word.

I don't know if it's a library or heliboard issue, but it's a dealbreaker.

Florisboard 0.5 is supposed to release with native functionality, hopefully works better and heliboard can use that too

3
I can't find this on f-droid for some reason...

2
- I had the same problem using droid-ify until I uninstalled openboard for some reason. (Technically I uninstalled the fork that has since turned into helibord, but it was called open board also before they renamed it for f-droid release, so it still showed up as open board in droid-ify, just a newer version)
  
  It did show up in the normal f-droid app for me though
  
  1
  
  Confusing... I'm currently using openboard; does that mean I'm actually using heliboard?
  
  1
Thanks, this looks great! Just downloaded it and gave it a quick spin.

2
I saw this recommended elsewhere on Lemmyna few days ago and have given it a shot after a month or two trying AnySoftKeyboard - its great.

It may not be as obviously feature laden with additional keyboards etc as ASK but it has much better defaults - all of the extra punctuation is where my fingers just expect it to be after a long time on SwiftKey.

2
Tried it out but my language sadly has the wrong layout so for now I'll stick to Gboard with disabled internet access.

1
How do I enable the multi lingual typing? In the keyboard settings I added German and English. Now I can switch with the spacebar, but I require it to work automatically. It should detect if I'm writing in english or German and then automatically change word suggestions and change auto correct. solved

Also not switch qwertz with qwerty layout, as obviosly I know only qwertz keyboard. Also üäöß need to be hidden and replace uaos automatically by dictionary. AS it does in Gboard. I'll report back if I find the option. solved

Edit: Okay looking good with the auto correct and suggestions now, I had to click on my keyboard language qwertz ~~German~~ and add English to the multilingual and not both separately. Testen wir dies nun mit Deutsch. Works.

Ignore the double post. It appeared out of nowhere. Strange.

1
- I wonder where the second post came from. It was just suddenly there, without me copy pasting anything.
  
  1
You had me at "number pad"

1
Why does it need to read and write to my contacts?

1
- Have you asked it to show contacts as suggestion? If not then deny.
  
  4
- In order to add their names to your dictionary. You don't have to allow it. But given that there's no internet access for the keyboard - it seems pretty safe
  
  2

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