for English i use heliboard. but i type in other languages also, and there are no practical choices in foss keyboards for those specific languages which also have the mainstream IME/key layout for my language (not qwerty).
fcitx provides some hope for the future but for now, it also doesn’t have the IME/key layout for my language (only has qwerty). hopefully it can also have handwriting in the future somehow (if only via user-installed model/blob similar to heliboard glide typing).
anyway, I’m on Graphene OS. so i wondered if revoking network permission and setting gboard permanently to incognito (is permanent possible?) would suffice to cut off data collection?
edit: FYI the languages/key layouts i need are Japanese via 12-key flick and Cantonese via traditional Chinese handwriting input
Given GrapheneOS does not have privileged Google Services, revoking network permissions should completely stop any data from leaving GBoard.
On other ROMs with privileged Google Services this might not be the case, altough I don’t expect it.
I think if you have play services installed then apps which want to talk to it still can (even with GrapheneOS sandboxing) even with network permission denied. I believe it’s just how all apps behave (not a special play services privilege), but I can’t remember if I read it on the GrapheneOS FAQ or just in some random comment.
You are 100% correct
In GOS apps in the same profile can have consensual IPC. If Google play is installed in the profile then apps can proxy data through it to Google.
(This is how the google notification framework works for example)
thank for the confirmation. I’ll go with something else
I’d just as soon not use google apps, where possible.
I’ve been using FUTO Keyboard and I really want to like and support FOSS projects, but goddam is it maddening at times. I was just contemplating gboard with network access blocked on my pixel with graphene when I saw this in my feed.
What issues have you found with FUTO? I’m using it RN and beyond Swype being kinda finicky, it works flawlessly.
But yeah, not FOSS. The FOSS keyboard alternatives are indeed atrocious, especially Florisboard which oddly enough seems to be GrapheneOS’s favourite option for a future standard keyboard.
HeliBoard is a good FOSS alternative to FUTO Keyboard
Good alternative? Hum, I’ll have to disagree with you there.
Firstly, Heliboard it is closer to Gboard than to FUTO, which is closer to Swiftkey. Its actually the reason why I went with FUTO, I need that split keyboard.
Secondly, prediction on Heliboard is just not there. Like, at all. It was absolutely maddening to use, it would predict completely unrelated words even when using custom libraries.
And it actually got worse over time because it started saving nonsense words like “GRT” or “hafe” directly onto my personal dictionary. At one point all I would get was nonsense word after nonsense word. I had to abandon it, it was borderline unusable after a certain point.
Like the commenter above, I too want to sponsor FOSS projects as much as possible, but the offers simply aren’t quite there yet.
pasting my comment here too. It may help somebody :
i’m trilingual and i use AnySoftKeyboard ☞ https://github.com/AnySoftKeyboard/AnySoftKeyboard or https://github.com/AnySoftKeyboard/AnySoftKeyboard
it supports 58 languages. Did you try ASK?
That’s what I’ve been doing. I use Futo as my regular keyboard, but Gboard for Japanese input. I did have to give it network access very briefly when I first installed it to let it download some dictionary/autocomplete. But working fine since I disabled network again after that.
Guys I use Futo keyboard too and my main problem is that I can’t find dictionary files for auto correct in my language. Do you know any sources I can look at? Or I’m just out of luck
Maybe tell people the language you need?
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