this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2026
119 points (92.2% liked)

Android

33716 readers
11 users here now

DROID DOES

Welcome to the Android community on Lemmy. Here you can participate in amazing discussions and events relating to all things Android.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules


1. All posts must be relevant to Android devices/operating system.


2. Posts cannot be illegal or NSFW material.


3. No spam, self promotion, or upvote farming. Sources engaging in these behavior will be added to the Blacklist.


4. Non-whitelisted bots will be banned.


5. Engage respectfully: Harassment, flamebaiting, bad faith engagement, or agenda posting will result in your posts being removed. Excessive violations will result in temporary or permanent ban, depending on severity.


6. Memes are not allowed to be posts, but are allowed in the comments.


7. Posts from clickbait sources are heavily discouraged. Please de-clickbait titles if it needs to be submitted.


8. Submission statements of any length composed of your own thoughts inside the post text field are mandatory for any microblog posts, and are optional but recommended for article/image/video posts.


Community Resources:


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Over the years I've tested out pretty much all the Android keyboards, but swipe typing always kept me on GBoard, even though GBoard did not support voice typing for anything except Google, so I had to switch keyboards for that.

Recently I learned that HeliBoard has support for gesture typing with the Google library. But I couldn't find any instructions on where to get the necessary files or how to do it. Well, someone posted a link to the file elsewhere so I'll share it here. And it works! Extremely well. I can also pin a button for voice typing and then select Transcribro for that (which uses OpenAI Whisper locally and works super well.

Another gripe I had with GBoard was the cursor moves way too fast when swiping on the space bar. Not so with Heliboard. You can also swipe backwards from the backspace key and it will highlight text and then delete it when you let go.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] AndrewZabar@lemmy.world 20 points 4 days ago (4 children)

I really like Heliboard but Jesus does it suck at autocorrect and detecting what key I meant to hit. Gboard is a thousand times more accurate in these respects and so I default to Heliboard but I’ll occasionally switch to gboard if I have a lot to type and Heli is just wasting my time.

[–] Aneb@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Idk if you saw this in Heliboard swipe gesture data gathering settings that they are capturing new data and they will tell you which words to swipe to spell out and compares it with Google's swiping autocorrect library. I think the developer is compiling a foss gesture library but they need more people actively adding to their data sets.

[–] AndrewZabar@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Well, I don’t use swipe, regardless which keyboard I’m using or even which device I’m using. I use about twenty different devices depending what I’m doing. Don’t ask lol. The frank reality is nothing whatsoever beats the iPhone when it comes to knowing what you meant to type. Even though the iPhone has recently had some really weird problems with autocorrect, I have sometimes been so shaky (Tourette’s) and I’ve typed some of the most incoherent drivel, and yet my iPhone got everything 100% corrected to what I intended to type. It’s just frankly astonishing.

But on Android my goal was to avoid Google products when possible. That’s why I went with Heliboard. FOSS, very customizable, backup and restore all settings (MAJOR help when adding to a new device). There are truly an impressive and elegantly functional features, anticipating a wide variety of needs.
BUT I have to erase and retype well more than half of my input. And that’s not including any shaking just for the record.

Meanwhile, gboard does about 85% as good a job as iPhone. I mean, I’ve got shit to get done, ya know? So, for now I am using gboard most of the time and I’ll change back to Heli once in awhile to see if it’s any better after there’s been an update.

I've definitely been contributing.

[–] Oberon@lemmy.zip 6 points 4 days ago

Glad it's not just me with the autocorrect. I feel like I am fighting it sometimes but I'm too stubborn to go back to GBoard

[–] oaklandnative@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I use FUTO Keyboard and it has the same issues. I have been using it for over a year, but it has not improved much in that regard. I was recently considering switching to Heliboard but maybe not now.

[–] AndrewZabar@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

I briefly tried FUTO a long time ago but it nowhere approached what I needed.

[–] artyom@piefed.social 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

That's why I mentioned the Google swipe library

[–] poop@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Im using the google swype library but its still god-awful compared to gboard.

[–] greatwhitebuffalo41@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

My issue, and it took me a long time to figure it out was that, I'm so used to Gboard and I've been using it so long, that it's muscle memory. Changing the bottom padding and some of the other settings to make it closer to the gboard layout helped so very much.

[–] poop@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I'll have to play with it more. What are your settings?

[–] greatwhitebuffalo41@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Pixel 8

Keyboard height 109%

Bottom padding default 147%

Everything else I believe is default as far as scales.

[–] poop@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Awesome, thanks. I'll give it a try

Good luck! I still have to change things more then Google keyboard but it's definitely improved