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.

  • AndrewZabar@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    4 days ago

    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.worldEnglish
      3·
      3 days ago

      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.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 hours 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.

    • oaklandnative@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      3 days ago

      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.

    • Oberon@lemmy.zipEnglish
      0·
      3 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

      • poop@lemmy.zipEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

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

        • GreatWhiteBuffalo41@slrpnk.netEnglish
          1·
          2 days ago

          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.