I can touch type with a physical keyboard, which helps somewhat with trying to type on smartphone virtual keyboards, but I still find myself way clumsier and error-prone on them when I try to touch tap-type on them.

For the most part I’ve worked around this via swipe/gesture-typing on virtual keyboards, but even that method is error-prone. So, I’d like to try to learn to tap-type similar to how I know how to touch type, but many resources I find are for physical keyboards instead, so…Any help here?

    • Worx@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
      9·
      11 months ago

      Not as well as on a physical keyboard, but I can. I know how wide my phone is and I hold it in the same grip every time, so I can get it roughly correct and most mistakes are fixed by autocorrect anyway.

    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      11 months ago

      Nope. Not reliably any how. Touch typing relies on locating the F and J keys; which is why they have those raised bumps.

      Now what you can do, is practice a similar tactic; except you’ll have to look at the screen to localize,

    • ALostInquirer@lemm.eeOP
      4·
      11 months ago

      From what I’ve seen of some folks, it at least seems like it, but maybe I’m mistaken and it’s more experience with tap-typing.

    • rufus@discuss.tchncs.de
      5·
      11 months ago

      Looks nice. Anyone good advice which layout to choose to type 60% German and 40% english? There are several german ones available.

      • Atemu@lemmy.ml
        3·
        11 months ago

        I use the deutsch symbols messageease layout as it’s the only German layout with symbols on the main keyboard. There’s also deutsch multilingual thumbkey if you’re fine with {``^ etc. being on the numpad.

      • iiGxC@slrpnk.net
        3·
        11 months ago

        No clue, sorry. Looking at the list, I’d go with “multilingual thumb-key” or just thumb-key. Messageease is the proprietary keyboard thumb key is based on, and I think more thought has been put into making even more optimized layouts for thumbkey, so I’d guess the messageease one is a bit outdated, and I think there might be a two hand mode that “type-split” is for but idk

    • 0x4E4F@infosec.pubEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      OK, what if I just care for privacy and I’m happy with the QWERTY layout?

      I’d love to ditch Gboard, but it has my native language in it, plus word underline when misspelling words. I don’t use predictive text or anything like that, just underline (I hate predictive text, it messes up my train of thought).

      Alternatives?

            • 0x4E4F@infosec.pubEnglish
              2·
              11 months ago

              Have no idea. I just know that Swift only does word suggestion, couldn’t find an option to just underline words.

          • ALostInquirer@lemm.eeOP
            2·
            11 months ago

            I’ve not tried Florisboard yet, but OpenBoard doesn’t have it (neither in the main build nor forks from what I can tell) and nor is it available in AnySoftKeyboard’s default install, but it’s highly customizable so it may be an option there.

            That said, isn’t spellcheck underlining more frequently in the apps you’re typing into rather than the virtual keyboard? Tbh I hadn’t ever noticed it in Gboard before, but I haven’t used it in a little while (though in looking into its settings I see it now, I guess I thought it’d been the other apps instead the whole time).

            • 0x4E4F@infosec.pubEnglish
              1·
              11 months ago

              That said, isn’t spellcheck underlining more frequently in the apps you’re typing into rather than the virtual keyboard?

              That is something that has always puzzled me, and yes, I believe you’re right.

              But, the confusing part for me is, Gboard has a spellcheck option, and if I disable it, it doesn’t underline words when typing (in apps that normally check spelling).

              But, let’s take Jerboa for example. It doesn’t work in Jerboa. No matter if enabled or disabled, there is no spellcheck in Jerboa, period.

              And that is why things are confusing. Is it the apps that do the spellcheck or the keyboard 🤔.

              For me, it would be logical if the keyboard does it (since it’s software, you can easilly add this option), just reports back to the software whether it should underline the word or not. But I could be wrong about this since I’m not a dev.

          • Wistful@discuss.tchncs.de
            1·
            11 months ago

            You can enable spell check underline even for keyboards that don’t have it, by changing which app it uses for spell checker specifically. In my case it’s under Android settings >> System >> Languages & input >> Spell checker (under the Tools category), It might be different on your phone, in that case I guess you can just search for “Spell checker” and then u can use Gboard for spell checking for example.

            • 0x4E4F@infosec.pubEnglish
              1·
              10 months ago

              That’s just it. It’s set to Gboard spell checker, but it doesn’t work in Jerboa.

              • Wistful@discuss.tchncs.de
                1·
                10 months ago

                Yeah, I just tested it in Jerboa…I guess in some apps it just doesn’t work, probably depending on how the text box is implemented in the app or something, I’m not sure.
                I didn’t have trouble with it so far because it has been working for all the apps that I use.

                federation on my lemmy instance is broken, so this message will probably arrive very late

                • 0x4E4F@infosec.pubEnglish
                  1·
                  10 months ago

                  That is what puzzled me as well. It litelarly works in every other app, except Jerboa. In have no idea why, and I have asked this same question a few times here on Lemmy, but no one seems to know the answer.

  • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
    12·
    11 months ago

    I think it’s more a matter of knowing the qwerty layout and trusting that the autocorrect will help you if you mess up.

    • ALostInquirer@lemm.eeOP
      2·
      11 months ago

      Tbh that’s probably correct, and the differences may be from me avoiding autocorrect as much as possible because of obnoxious stuff like it persistently trying to correct fav words like fuck

      • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
        4·
        11 months ago

        Over time it figures out which words you use and doesn’t clobber your vernacular as much. You also can get good at watching the suggestions and picking the right one rather than finishing typing the word

    • shastaxc@lemm.ee
      1·
      11 months ago

      Of course! Just bring your laptop with you when you need to send a text message from the grocery store.

  • TheRedSpade@lemmy.world
    5·
    11 months ago

    I know it looks difficult, but if you already touch type on PC then Minuum is a great mobile keyboard. You just have to train yourself to not try being precise with it (impossible to do quickly). I actually find it easier to use if I don’t look at it while I’m typing. I’ve been using it since it was on Indiegogo and haven’t seen anything else worth trying. I’m pretty sure you can even get it for free now.

    Note that it does learn from you over time, so the more you use it the more accurate it becomes.

    In the above image, I’ve put the cursor back on the word “accurate” for a little demo. The first group of letters are the ones that I actually hit. After that are Minuum’s guesses in order of probability of being correct.

    If you want to type a word that isn’t in its dictionary yet, you can swipe up from the top row to bring up a full keyboard. Selecting the word once it’s typed usually adds it, though for some reason they’ve excluded swears from that.

    • squeakycat@lemmy.ml
      5·
      11 months ago

      That is so wild! I love the inventiveness of human interface devices. Too bad it isn’t FOSS, it’d be nice to see it in fdroid.

      • TheRedSpade@lemmy.world
        2·
        11 months ago

        I just checked the play store after seeing this comment. Apparently it hasn’t been updated since February of 2017, but it works just fine.

        • Cheskaz@lemmy.world
          1·
          11 months ago

          I actually still had it installed and seeing you mention it promoted me to try it again.

          I was so hoping it had been resurrected by the dev because it’s such a neat keyboard.

  • Siegfried@lemmy.world
    4·
    11 months ago

    I guess you coud try one of those web pages for regular keyboard input training.

    Anyway, i struggle with the same shit. Another recommendation, disable the auto corrector.