Releases · Helium314/HeliBoard
github.com
Customizable and privacy-conscious open-source keyboard - Helium314/HeliBoard

The successor of Openboard, Heliboard finally comes out in 1.0 my favorite open source keyboard out there.

  • ⓝⓞ🅞🅝🅔@lemmy.ca
    441·
    7 months ago

    HeliBoard with Swipe + FUTO have made replacing gboard possible for me. I feel like it’s been a 90% replacement, a far greater degree than some of the decent keyboards currently available. I regularly use but swipe and speech to text in two languages. I’m really really happy and grateful for these tools. 💜

    • ⓝⓞ🅞🅝🅔@lemmy.ca
      39·
      7 months ago

      Just in case I’m asked, here’s the basics steps to get it going:

      • I downloaded the release from https://github.com/Helium314/HeliBoard and then installed. (Or set it up via Obtainium until its ready for F-Droid release)
      • I downloaded the Swipe library linked on the HeliBoard Github page from here.
      • Under HeliBoard settings -> advanced, I clicked “load gesture library” and selected the downloaded swipe library
      • And for voice input, l downloaded Futo from the play store. FYI, it’s free and offline, but not FOSS.

      That’s it.

      Just setup the two apps with your specifics like the theme and etc. This is what mine looks like now:

    • (⬤ᴥ⬤)@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      2·
      7 months ago

      this is great. I’ve been looking for a gboard replacement for so long
      minor thing: how do i import my personal dictionary from gboard? the github page says something about .dict files but gboard exported a zip with a .txt file

      • ⓝⓞ🅞🅝🅔@lemmy.ca
        1·
        7 months ago

        Unfortunately, I’m not familiar with importing and exporting personal dictionaries. I looked into it a bit, but wasn’t successful in finding anything relevant.

    • camr_on@lemmy.world
      1·
      7 months ago

      Am I understanding correctly, you can swipe in two languages without hitting a “switch language” button like on Gboard? If so I may have to make the switch

      • ⓝⓞ🅞🅝🅔@lemmy.ca
        3·
        7 months ago

        Unfortunately no. That’s remains part of the 10% that this solution doesn’t replicate 1:1. But… you can use a spacebar gesture (e.g. vertical swipe) to quickly change languages. Works like a charm.

      • ⓝⓞ🅞🅝🅔@lemmy.ca
        2·
        7 months ago

        Oh my goodness yes! I say punctuations constantly out of habit and then have to edit them out. But I’m also really impressed with FUTOs ability to determine punctuation based on pauses.

        • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.comEnglish
          2·
          7 months ago

          Yes, don’t get me wrong, it is very, very, good. However I want full control over the characters being entered. I had thought that’s what “verbose” mode was going to be, but honestly I can’t figure out what that is.

  • unknowing8343@discuss.tchncs.de
    25·
    7 months ago

    This is the definitive replacement for gboard, people. It works fantastically well already with everything that Gboard has and it will only get better from here on.

    • vort3@lemmy.ml
      4·
      7 months ago

      Does it have multiple layouts support (Latin, Cyrillic), swipe typing and clipboard history?

      • Wilmo Bones@lemmy.worldAkan
        3·
        7 months ago

        Idk about layouts but swipe is available if you look into it, you just need to download a file to load the it into the keyboard and yes on clipboard history

  • nasi_goreng@lemmy.zip
    9·
    7 months ago

    Still waiting for Japanese support. At the moment the only decent Japanese keyboard on Android are either GBoard or Microsoft one unfortunately.

        • oni@lemmy.mlEnglish
          31·
          7 months ago

          If you’re satisfied with it, you don’t need to update. But Openboard lacks a lot of features many people want. The biggest of them is probably the glide typing, which Heliboard supports. And it also added a lot of quality of life improvements.

    • helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world
      5·
      7 months ago

      Some new features, bug fixes, and ongoing support.

      It is a new application so you do have to set it up fresh - don’t switch until you have a bit of spare time. Missed the back and restore button in settings.

      Personally I’m on one of the fork’s beta versions. I’m waiting for the f-droid release so I get updates.

    • 8orange8@lemm.eeEnglish
      4·
      7 months ago

      It has swipe typing plus a lot of other new features/theme customisation that openboard didn’t have.

  • ray@lemmy.mlEnglish
    6·
    7 months ago

    Looks nice but I wish the clipboard history could be based on number of items and not just time.

  • SeekPie@lemm.ee
    4·
    7 months ago

    Is this better in any way tohan florisboard? I’ve been using it (florisboard) for a year now and had no problems and have loved its features (especially the text navigation arrows and clipboard history).

  • tutus@sh.itjust.works
    4·
    7 months ago

    Been using this for about 3 months or so. The one piece missing is good swipe word recognition - its really poor compared to Gboard even after this amount of time. I spend more time correcting words than I saved nor typing them. Used swipe with Gboard for many years previously so I know hope swipe works.

    Any suggestions on how to improve it?

    • ⓝⓞ🅞🅝🅔@lemmy.ca
      3·
      7 months ago

      I have found this to be the case as well.

      What it has forced me to do now is to actually try to be close to the letters. When I’m swiping with gboard, I was very sloppy and it would recognize what I wrote. At this point, I’m fine being more accurate for the tradeoff.

      • tutus@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        7 months ago

        Hmmm. Yeah I’m pretty sloppy about my letters too. Maybe I need to be a bit more precise to get the best out of it.

        • ⓝⓞ🅞🅝🅔@lemmy.ca
          1·
          7 months ago

          I have to admit that gboard is pretty amazing at the detecting my sloppiness. But… knowing everything I type and say is going to Google… well, let’s just says I’m willing to tolerate the extra work so as to keep things away from them.

          FUTO is definitely slower than Google’s speech to text engine, but for the same reason… I think I’m completely okay with that now.

          • Uninvited Guest@lemmy.ca
            3·
            7 months ago

            I’ve turned off network access for Gboard and have the offline speech recognition installed. This is why I have Helioboard + FUTO installed but don’t use them, as they don’t yet exceed an offline Gboard in function.

            • ⓝⓞ🅞🅝🅔@lemmy.ca
              1·
              7 months ago

              Dang. I use TrackerControl to do just that for many apps and hadn’t even thought about trying to do it for gboard + gvoice because I had not know they had offline processing available for both.

              Now its tempting to switch back and see… 😬 but… so far this combo of HeliBoard with swipe and FUTO have been sooo close… and its not google. 😏

              • Uninvited Guest@lemmy.ca
                1·
                7 months ago

                In Gboard settings, under voice typing, it is the faster voice typing toggle. That brings the voice recognition library onto your device rather than using data. The only thing that does not work in Gboard after disabling network access is the gif search.

                I extensively use glide typing when not using voice, and as you’ll see from other comments on this post the glide typing is not so great on Helioboard.

                And… I do kind of prefer Gboard’s style of voice to text where I voice all of the punctuation. Pausing and thinking about what you are going to say using FUTO means it tends to end a sentence.

                • ⓝⓞ🅞🅝🅔@lemmy.ca
                  1·
                  7 months ago

                  Yeah, I’m having to tolerate a whole bunch for this next best solution, but it’s far from perfect.

                  It seems you and I have near identical usage style and when the same pet peeve, so I completely understand why you use it the way you do. I’m quite terrible and very very slow at typing normally. When I watch my kids text, it literally boggles my mind. It simply is impossible for me.

  • Onizuka@feddit.de
    3·
    7 months ago

    Using it since version 14.1, as far as I remember but since then, I was finally able to replace gboard. Heli is really awesome. I always believed that florisboard will be my gboard replacement but for non-english swipe users nothing really changed or improved for years and then heli came out of the blue. Of course, it’s still a compromise compared to gboard and it probably always will be but to me it reached a point where this is minimal.

    Yesterday I found out about the experimental dictionaries and imported them. Let’s see if there will be visible improvement. Does anyone have more experience with those dictionaries?

    • tutus@sh.itjust.works
      2·
      7 months ago

      I didn’t know about experimental dictionaries. Would this help with swipe recognition as it’s really poor compared to gboard?

      • Onizuka@feddit.de
        1·
        7 months ago

        I found out about it only yesterday so I can’t really answer you this but it really seems like english works really well. I can’t day of it worked like tie with the old dictionary. Maybe someone else can answer this as I would like to know this as well.