The keys are not even the size they are on the screen, what’s getting drawn is just a grid of letters. Touch keyboards are far more complicated than you think.
Yeah. I’m gonna guess this types about the same. This is probally just an aesthetic change for the appearance of being “New!”.
someone in that department is getting a promotion, I bet
I switched to Heliboard and I couldn’t be more happier! It is just as good as any proprietary keyboards.
Gboard is so far the only one i know that actually works with my use case. Swiping with multiple languages active at once, and actually figuring out what I want to type.
I’m running it without Google services or network access.
SwiftKey also does this!
I really, really want to switch to a less, uh, commercial keyboard but none of the ones typically praised here (for good reason) support multilingual swiping.
For about a decade now google has been changing shit for no particular reason, this is just the latest.
The reason is their internal promotion culture. You cant get promoted without global impact, so buckle up we are changing things so we can get promoted not because it’s better.
That’s got to be the absolute worst KPI I’ve ever heard of.
It’s a KPI you develop in the 00s culture of move fast and break things when the competition is at your heels and you want to be at theirs. You want to be the search engine that made the email client everyone uses otherwise that email client might make a search engine everyone uses…
It was outdated in the mid 10s, and it’s the mid 20s now
That’s just their way they keep it alive. If it were actually good, Google would cancel it.
One thing I did notice a while back, was seeing the 2022ish interface for YouTube and Google search and feeling how dated it was, still absolutely usable mind you, just clearly with a design ethos from an older era.
Most the time, I feel that changes Google make are absolutely arbitrary, rounding a button and then squaring it again, but I need to give them credit that there is something more, something about staying at the forefront of GUIs. It’s still all bullshit of course, the old one looks older but is identically useful.
Basically, they have nothing else to do, so they just throw shit at the wall to see what sticks.
Sticky touchscreen for haptic feedback?
Sir, you earned yourself an extra piss break!
God how many things have changed on my phone that I did not ask them to. Changing the font on the clock. Changing the lock screen layout. REMOVING FROGGY WEATHER BEING BACK FROGGY YOU FUCKS.
Marketing and design teams just have to justify their existence. Makes for annoying stupid changes.
Don’t get me started.
Gmail for business has been renamed at least four times.
Google Home changed layout for no particular reason and made everything an extra click away.
Google Assistant removed perfectly working actions, try turning on your A/C at 3am in the morning whilst you’re sleeping.
Android changes navigation modes making everything worse.
Gmail keeps changing its layout.
Google Admin moves sections around for no reason.
Google search returns worse results every week.
Google Gemini is infecting every service.
Google Sites removed simple blogging functionality without any alternative.
Free services for life are now paid.
Google Play moved the search button to the bottom but you still have to tap at the top to type your search, so it’s just an extra click.
It still requires the extra click, but if you hit the search icon again then your keyboard will pop up. So no need to move your finger up top, Spotify’s search has the same setup.
They learned it from Microsoft.
I haven’t used Microsoft software for 25 years or so, so I don’t have any reference point, but there was a time when Google lead the pack in innovation, that’s no longer the case.
Mhm.
Innovate, Dominate, Stagnate, Enshittify.
Classic tech company lifecycle.
Google lead the way at buying innovation.
Late-stage tech bros, devoid of innovation and flailing at their precious cup game.
I’m so over this garbage. RIP smartphones.
We didn’t ask for the red to pink colour fade on the Youtube playbar either but here we are…
HOLY SHIT. Thank you. That’s what that is. I thought my screen was wonky or my eyesight was failing. It’s not even really linear, it just looks like the last 3cm of the bar are pink
Huh, TIL that’s baked into YouTube. I thought maybe sponsorblock was doing it.
I thought that as well at first, but it was in every video
Circles and round and we live them. Let’s make all the buttons in our UI round.
- Google probably
The fuck? If you’re gonna change the shape of the keys, at least make them hexagons. Because as we all know, hexagons are the bestagons.
Now show us your browser history.
Also then the clickable area would be bigger reducing errors. I tried a keyboard that did this once. Was a rough transition, but I managed. Unfortunately I ended up going back since it was lacking some other features.
Good time for FOSS keyboard apps to get some more love
Heliboard and Futo were the recommendations from what I remember?
Currently using Traditional T9 from F-Droid. Works well.
Even has a decent emoji picker, which is good. 👌 (However, i say that and couldn’t find the OK symbol…)But for a full board: Heliboard is my go-to.
Oh that’s cool, does your device have hardware keys then?
No, Traditional T9 has a virtual keyboard as well.
OpenBoard still works well for me. Including swiping and auto correct.
OpenBoard hasn’t been updated for the last 3 years. HeliBoard is a continuation of the OpenBoard development, I highly recommend it.
Heliboard is basically the same, but has the ability to add glide. Plus suggestions/corrections are already implemented, so I prefer it over Floris (which I used for months before finding heliboard)
Anyone longing looking to add swipe library for heliboard Find it Here by picking raw and then uploading it to heliboard in advanced settings>load gesture typing library.
Sharing because it took me a bit to find it the first time.
Futo has been my favorite so far compared to other keyboards. I haven’t used Heliboard yet, but it also looks like a good option.
I use the futo keyboard as well, but autocorrect and swiping is not good at all. correctly spelt words constantly gets changed for me, clipboard doesn’t see what I copy too many times and swiping inaccuracy is too frequent.
only reason I put up with it is for the futo microphone. mic app is in a league of it’s own
Oh man, is that the issue with my clipboard? It has been driving me NUTS. The other issues are true, but I can live with them. I’ve really been enjoying FUTO though, so I’m not sure I want to give it up.
I haven’t had any of those issues. Out of curiosity, what version of futo keyboard are you running?
The voice transcription is just OpenAI whisper but yeah it’s pretty great. I used it to write this.
its just OpenAI whisper that runs locally on my device, as god intended lol
I had the same problem, but I found that turning up the advanced Parameter Values in the Text Prediction settings helps to keep everything spelled correctly. I’m currently at 10.4 for the transformer strength and 8.3 for the autocorrect threshold and I’m noticing a lot less issues… I haven’t tested out turning it up all the way yet.
I also have the Transformer fine tuning enabled.
The swipe feature definitely needs some attention.
They do have a crowdsourced way of helping to improve their swipe prediction, more info on the link here: https://swipe.futo.org/
You’ll notice that even the swipe prediction for Heliboard comes from a closed source library.
Damn imma have to save this comment
I’ll take a look at this tonight, thanks buddy
Futo works really nice! Glide is pretty decent, though not as good as gboard’s. Wish it had custom background images though…
I’m using Yandex Keyboard #FuckGoogle
Using a Yandex product is hardly better than using something from Google.
I’m aware, but I like how Yandex Keyboard looks. FOSS alternatives aren’t that pretty, at least for me.
Futo with amoled dark purple theme is actually slick as hell imo
Ew
I’ve tried a few keyboards over the years, and the only one that I actually liked was actual malicious adware.
Looking forward to seeing good suggestions in this thread.
Definitely recommend Heliboard.
Try giving us back a fucking physical keyboard. Touchscreens fucking suck.
I’d really love a modern smartphone with a t9 keypad. I used to be able to type almost as fast on t9 as on a real keyboard. I miss it so much.
There’s an app for that
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.github.sspanak.tt9
It’s not as good as a physical numpad, but it gets the job done
Thanks! The lack of a tactile board is a lot of the problem though
I disagree, but to each their own. You do have a potential option here:
FUTO keyboard. Try it. Say bye to gboard.
Is it actually called futo? Nothing shows up searching it in fdroid
Yes but I use obsidian not fdroid
Obtanium?
Its another app store. heres futos webpage. https://github.com/futo-org/android-keyboard
I meant is obtanium what you used, think you mixed up that and obsidian the note taking app but found obtanium through futos site
Oh. You’re right. I did get the name mixed up.
I periodically try FUTO. It’s a great keyboard, except for its swiping support. That seems to be gradually improving, but it isn’t quite there yet. Unfortunately that is how I do all my typing, so I keep going back to GBoard. I look forward to leaving it for good.
This has been my issue with every single FOSS keyboard. I can’t live without swipe.
Edit: Forgot you could download a swipe library for heliboard Here by picking raw and then uploading it to heliboard in advanced settings>load gesture typing library.
I have added the swipe library to FUTO. It works, but not well enough for me. (That may be my clumsy swiping, but the issue remains.) I estimate that it gets about one word in four wrong. GBoard is still wrong about one time in ten, but at that rate, swiping and correcting is still much faster for me than traditional typing.
Ahh. I only use it occasionally. I’m bad at spelling and need the word predictions too much.
maybe the idea is that round keys will have less typos than rectangular keys that are all touching each other?
Hopefully with the more available space between the keys, then there will be less typos.
I type with my thump cause I like to use my phone one handed but I get a lot of typos due to that.
Florisboard beta keyboard lets you increase that available space even further by decreasing the letter size. It’s still missing other features tho, like word suggestions, auto correct etc.
They are most likely running an A/B test on exactly those metrics.
We’ll know if it’s successful if they roll it out in the end.
