I saw a post on reddit asking for open source android keyboards in recent years since a lot of the posts were older. One user recommended “Futo Keyboard”.

To be clear, I’m not affiliated with them but I’ve been trying them based on that reddit response and I just wanted to share here in case anyone else has been looking.

In short, this keyboard is about as close to awesome as you can get so far. Features I like:

  • Feels like GBOARD
  • Works fully offline
  • Gesture typing (about 75% as accurate as GBoard)
  • Built in offline speech to text (no third party engine needed to download

I’ve tried other options like heliboard and openboard and they are great too, but I think so far this has been the best I’ve tried and I wanted to recommend it on here in case anyone else is looking. Feel free to share any other setups or recommendations below!

EDIT: it was pointed out that it is source-available and not open source. Apologize for my initial assumption. The source and license can be viewed here: Futo Keyboard. It is fully open for non-commercial use. Anything commercial can have restrictions.

  • thisismyname@lemm.eeEnglish
    4·
    11 hours ago

    Heliboard can have swipe typing. It relies on a closed source library though, so…

    https://github.com/Helium314/HeliBoard?tab=readme-ov-file#features

    • Glide typing (only with closed source library ☹️)
    • library not included in the app, as there is no compatible open source library available
    • can be extracted from GApps packages (“swypelibs”), or downloaded here (click on the file and then “raw” or the tiny download button)