Here’s a couple of FOSS keyboard alternatives in no particular order:

Unexpected Keyboard - fdroid

  • GitHub Repo
  • License: GPL-3.0
  • Permissions:

    control vibration
    run at startup

FlorisBoard - fdroid

  • GitHub Repo
  • Apache-2.0
  • Permissions:

    control vibration

Thumb-Key - fdroid

  • GitHub Repo
  • AGPL-3.0
  • Permissions:

    com.dessalines.thumbkey.DYNAMIC_RECEIVER_NOT_EXPORTED_PERMISSION

Notable Extra Notes:

I’ve used Unexpected Keyboard and FlorisBoard and I’d say that they’re great introductory FOSS apps for most users (users inexperienced to sudden changes)

  • Unexpected Keyboard uses Nix in their codebase :D

  • Thumb-Key is maintained by dessalines whom is a Lemmy dev

  • Florisboard is starting to convert their codebase to Rust,

    • literally their commit to main yesterday:

      “Switch native code to Rust”

    so this is pretty awesome to see!!

  • recursive_recursion [they/them]@programming.devOPM
    2·
    7 months ago

    For gestures/swipe-typing I do know that all 3 have that feature
    unfortunately I can’t provide reviews on it as I still tap to type, haven’t had time to retrain unfortunately

    For Florisboard’s features I really like their sea of options for customizability:

    • it gives me Arch Linux vibes as it give you plenty to fiddle around with like:
      hinted symbols/number row, built-in Incognito mode, undo&redo, built-in dev tool toggles, customizations backup&restore, etc
    • gripes wise is wanting remap keys but this is such an insignificant gripe considering all the features they’ve implemented
      • I’d imagine that this is a potential feature down the far future

    For Unexpected Keyboard, the features it provided was actually unexpected:

    • like I didn’t expect to get a Ctrl, Fn, ESC button, like wtf that’s pretty awesome!
    • it also has a single button arrow d-pad!
    • essentially this has all the keys on a desktop keyboard
    • gripes wise I wish there was a language indicator for when I’m switching between dvorak, qwerty, and Korean
      • this is also a very small nitpick that will probably get implemented later on

    I haven’t used Thumb-Keys but I’ve seen good reviews about it so it’s worth a shot as well 👍