The only app I can’t live without. Except for gboard, all of my applications are Foss. There is no competition for gboard’s swipe typing, not to mention its many capabilities like as searching for gifs, stickers, being able to paste copied images, translating, and so on. I’d like to know how I can use gboard while maintaining my privacy. According to what I’ve heard, it sends all typing data to Google’s server. If you ask me, that’s a massive no-no. Do you have any suggestions?

    • U de Recife@lemmy.sdfeu.org
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      1 year ago

      I’m so thrilled right now! I’m already typing this reply on OpenBoard and I’m loving it.

      Gboard was also a big hurdle to my need to degoogle my phone. But not anymore!

      Thank you so much. You’ve brighten my day. I’m both happy for knowing this and for finding about it on the fediverse.

    • SGforce@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Wow, this is an awesome keyboard! I love the pointer moving with the spacebar.

    • jsnfwlr@lemmy.world
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      Thanks for sharing. I’ve finally replaced Gboard. Now I have to adjust to the new key sizes, but at least I know my data is private

      • WhoRoger@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You can resize it in settings, at least the height. I have mine set to 80%. Before OB I was using GB and I recall setting it so both looked the same.

      • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
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        1 year ago

        How do you gesture type with it? Slide doesn’t work for me and there’s no option to enable it.

        • makingStuffForFun@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          You have to go to the settings and turn gestures on. Also this is not the fdroid version. This is the version from the link above.

        • Sl00k@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          Weird I’m not seeing any options for emojis anywhere on the keyboard using S23 Ultra

          • U de Recife@lemmy.sdfeu.org
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            Long press the enter/return button (round, with an left point arrow). It’ll show you the emoji and clipboard buttons. 💡

            Alternatively, you can turn on the dedicated emoji button on OpenBoard’s preferences.

            You can also long press the comma button. There you’ll find the preferences and emoji buttons.

          • WhoRoger@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Maybe you have the key disabled, look in settings under preferences. There’s a bunch of stuff you might want to tweak.

          • ijeff@lemdro.idM
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            1 year ago

            If you long press the comma key on the left of the spacebar, you’ll see an emoji icon on the far right.

    • iturnedintoanewt@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I’m glad the word is spreading, i also found out a few weeks ago through Lemmy. The only bug that drives me up the wall is when trying to delete backwards to fix a word. It eventually eats the space to the PREVIOUS word, joining them together and making an even bigger mess. It also looks like it never got an update after September :(

      • WhoRoger@lemmy.world
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        I guess you’re using Jerboa? Apparently that’s a bug between WebView Webkit and the AOSP keyboard (which OB is based on), or something… I don’t quite get what’s going on…

    • diegantobass@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Voilà ! My first great piece of advice found on Lemmy! So thankful for this, and for witnessing the sudden growth of a great community here on Lemmy <3

    • KroninJ@lemmy.world
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      Thanks! The only thing I don’t like is that I can’t have arrow keys. It’s immediately better than SwiftKey for sure, so I’ll adjust.

      • WhoRoger@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You can use swiping on the space bar to move left and right at least.

        AnySoftKeyboard has arrow keys and more gestures, but it’s not as refined overall imo.

        Floris Board has gestures to move around IIRC, but not at the same time as gesture typing, and is lacking word suggestions.

        • KroninJ@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Awesome! Using space to go left and right is good enough for me!

          Thanks a ton for that. I got to really liking OpenBoard since I started using it.

    • bug@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      I’ve been looking for something like this for so long, thank you!

      • Spendies@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Where does it say that? The abstract explicitly says that neither gboard or swiftkey collect or share the input content or frequency of specific characters entered.

        Does it say differently in the actual paper?

    • sirnak@lemmy.world
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      The post title contradicts the abstract. Gboard does not transmit the content “only” telemetry data.

    • 𝕽𝖔𝖔𝖙𝖎𝖊𝖘𝖙@lemmy.world
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      That’s actually pretty cool

      It works like this: your device downloads the current model, improves it by learning from data on your phone, and then summarizes the changes as a small focused update. Only this update to the model is sent to the cloud, using encrypted communication, where it is immediately averaged with other user updates to improve the shared model. All the training data remains on your device, and no individual updates are stored in the cloud.

  • wolre@lemmy.world
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    My main deal breaker with most open source keyboards is the usually pretty bad multi language support. I type in three languages all the time and don’t want to have to switch keyboards every time I switch the language. Currently using SwiftKey, just because it handles multi-language (fairly) well.

    • jet@hackertalks.com
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      1 year ago

      If you have Google play services the keyboard could phone home through play services. Shutting off network access isn’t 100% effective, especially for Google apps.

      Obviously depending on your threat model this is fine.

      • iturnedintoanewt@lemmy.world
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        If you are using Graphene, Play Services are themselves sandboxed and running as a user app with no privileges. I think they really can’t be accessed on graphene, unless specifically choosing to.

        • jet@hackertalks.com
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          I have a limited understanding. But I believe in graphene the Google Play services are available in the user account that is running the Google Play services. So if you have a Google keyboard running as your main user and you have Google Play services running in your main user account they can talk to each other. That’s how apps like signal could use Google Play services for message detection.

          But if you have a work account and a personal account and Google Play is only in the work account. The personal account cant cross talk to it.

  • slapmefive@lemmy.world
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    I believe some custom ROMs use an AOSP version that is very simplified, but it’s not a 1:1 replacement. I’ll be following this to see if anybody has suggestions.

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    F-Droid has a lot of security issues(if you care about security), use Neo Store if you want access to F-Droid apps with a more secure app.

    EDIT: Even better to use Obtainium and add the links of the APP’s own Github/GitLab repo to it.

    • milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee
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      I read through that article, and though I don’t have the time or knowledge to properly critique it, I found quite a lot of it unconvincing.

      It’s one thing to agree there are potential issues, but the article seemed to jump a bit too easily, via rhetoric more than logic, to “therefore it’s unsuitable” and similarly to “the other ones are better”.

      (Disclaimer: I only know mildly what I’m talking about!! If whoever reads this is interested, I hope you can follow the details to their source and get involved in the proper discussion for improving f-droid and/or encouraging another respiratory client.)

      • argv_minus_one@beehaw.org
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        A tempting idea would be to compare F-Droid to the desktop Linux model where users trust their distribution maintainers out-of-the-box (this can be sane if you’re already trusting the OS anyway), but the desktop platform is intrinsically chaotic and heterogeneous for better and for worse. It really shouldn’t be compared to the Android platform in any way.

        This is, quite frankly, borderline misinformation. Malicious packages in Linux distributions are unheard of. Malicious apps in the allegedly-more-secure Google Play, on the other hand, are a dime a dozen.

        The downplaying of the importance of reproducible builds further diminishes my opinion of this piece.

        I’m going to go ahead and continue using F-Droid, thanks.

    • argv_minus_one@beehaw.org
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      A tempting idea would be to compare F-Droid to the desktop Linux model where users trust their distribution maintainers out-of-the-box (this can be sane if you’re already trusting the OS anyway), but the desktop platform is intrinsically chaotic and heterogeneous for better and for worse. It really shouldn’t be compared to the Android platform in any way.

      This is, quite frankly, borderline misinformation. Malicious packages in Linux distributions are unheard of. Malicious apps in the allegedly-more-secure Google Play, on the other hand, are a dime a dozen.

      The downplaying of the importance of reproducible builds further diminishes my opinion of this piece.

      I’m going to go ahead and continue using F-Droid, thanks.

      • user@infosec.pub
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        What exactly are you trying to point out ?

        From your quote: “It really shouldn’t be compared to the Android platform in any way.”

        And where exactly does it downplay reproducible builds ? “reproducible builds are not as common as we would have wanted.”

        “I’m going to go ahead and continue using F-Droid, thanks.” Good friend, do whatever it is you want to do.

        I’m just trying to spread security awareness.

        EDIT: “Saying Play Store is filled with malicious apps is beyond the point: the false sense of security is a real issue. Users should not think of the F-Droid main repository as free of malicious apps, yet unfortunately many are inclined to believe this.”

        • argv_minus_one@beehaw.org
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          From your quote: “It really shouldn’t be compared to the Android platform in any way.”

          I quoted that because it’s part of the borderline misinformation. Security is security. Malware is malware. Android isn’t magical and neither is desktop Linux. They absolutely can be meaningfully compared.

          And where exactly does it downplay reproducible builds ? “reproducible builds are not as common as we would have wanted.”

          Ah, you’re right. I misread that part, sorry.

          I’m just trying to spread security awareness.

          So am I. I’m an ornery old Linux nerd and security snob. I’d excise all proprietary software from my home and office if I could, precisely because it has such an appalling track record and the blatantly unnecessary attack surfaces of DRM and telemetry.

          Can F-Droid be more secure than it is? Sure. Do the issues described in this paper mean F-Droid is so rampantly insecure that even Play is safer? Absolutely not.

          By the way, I’m not sure I understand how Neo Store is supposed to be more secure, as it’s supposedly just an alternative UI for F-Droid. As for Obtainium, it’ll protect you from malfeasance or compromise on the part of the F-Droid repository, but it won’t protect you from malicious app developers, and unless I’m mistaken, the latter is a much more common threat.

          • user@infosec.pub
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            “I quoted that because it’s part of the borderline misinformation. Security is security. Malware is malware. Android isn’t magical and neither is desktop Linux. They absolutely can be meaningfully compared.”

            That’s why the author said it’s tempting. You cannot compare desktop Linux to Android. Android is light-years ahead in terms of security than desktop Linux will ever be.

            If you install Debian on your machine then that means you trust the Debian developers. If you trust the Debian developers then that means that you trust their repositories. The same cannot be said about Android. If you, for example, install GrapheneOS you’re trusting the graphene developers for the OS and the individual developers for their individual apps you install on your phone.

            On Android a compromised user doesn’t have root, on ordinary Linux desktops, a compromised non-root user with access to sudo is equal to a full root compromise. On a Linux desktop with Xorg you can easily keylog everything with one malicious app(that app automatically gets these permissions without prompting you), with modern Android that’s not even an option(you’d need to accept all of these invasive permissions yourself, unless the app has a zero day that can bypass permissions).

            The list goes on and on and on. You can read more here

            “Ah, you’re right. I misread that part, sorry.”

            No biggie :D

            “By the way, I’m not sure I understand how Neo Store is supposed to be more secure, as it’s supposedly just an alternative UI for F-Droid.”

            Neo store has the highest target SDK currently so it can use security and privacy APIs that Android provides with each new version. That alone is one of the biggest reasons to use neo store over native F-Droid. It shows you the target SDK, permissions (Way more understandable than whatever F-Droid does) & trackers for the apps you want to install. So you can make a more informed decision if you want that app installed.

            “As for Obtainium, it’ll protect you from malfeasance or compromise on the part of the F-Droid repository, but it won’t protect you from malicious app developers, and unless I’m mistaken, the latter is a much more common threat.”

            You are adding more attack surface when using F-Droid, but when using Obtainium, you have one less attack surface. Instead of worrying about malicious F-Droid developers and malicious app developers, you only worry about the latter. Malicious app developers can still publish to F-Droid without F-Droid getting compromised.

  • bugsmith@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    To those who have been recommending Florisboard in this thread: Thank you. I’ve longed for a good FOSS keyboard, but always found they lacked enough features that I was willing to compromise and stick with gboard. Florisboard, using the latest beta from IzzyOnDroid, absolutely hits the mark already. It’s missing a few features, like word autosuggest, but I can live without that for a while.

        • Swimmerman96@beehaw.org
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          I’m not sure, that’s a question for the Dev.

          Some of the reason may be the hastle of rebranding, having two Openboards would be confusing so the fork would need to change names and icons and such. Some of it is also be this is for personal use, and we happen to find it, so they may not be interested in the expectation of maintaining it beyond their own useage. Some of it may be this is good enough, Openboard’s release cycle is pretty slow so the fork doesn’t need to be updated and released often, so an APK on Github downloaded twice a year is good enohgh for them.

  • آوید@lemm.ee
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    FOSS is not just about privacy! Freedom is that important reason you should care about. FlorisBoard is my suggestion for you.

    • ForeverClueless@kbin.social
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      Yesterday I installed Grapheneos so I’ve swapped to florisboard. Not bad but it’s very specific on where you swipe using gestures. I’m slowly getting used to it but gboard was a lot more forgiving.

          • WhoRoger@lemmy.world
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            Why is everyone obsessed with constant updates? It’s not broken, there’s nothing to fix. It’s a keyboard, I prefer it to be fast, reliable and not phone home.

            I don’t need some bloated mess that will take 10 seconds to start and require a gigabyte of RAM because the devs need to push an update every week with new useless crap without testing it.

              • WhoRoger@lemmy.world
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                It doesn’t have internet accesss. There isn’t much to worry about.

                Ed: I understand that non-internet apps can be used for attacks as well, but maybe there just hasn’t been anything to update.

          • WhoRoger@lemmy.world
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            Weren’t you the one who randomly mentioned it a few weeks ago? After which it’s been my favorite thing to recommend.

        • ForeverClueless@kbin.social
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          Ok I’m f-droiding right now :)
          edit :just realized it’s different than the one you linked.
          further edit: It’s much better than floris. Happy days, thank you for the suggestion.

      • Bombastic@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        If you’re on graphene OS then just uninstall GBoard and when youre installing it back uncheck the network permission checkbox. Easy as pie

        • FutileRecipe@lemmy.world
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          No need to uninstall. Just go into Settings - Apps - Gboard - Permissions. You can deny or grant any perms (including Network) there.

      • scutiger@lemmy.world
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        If you’re on GrapheneOS, you get the option to block an app’s network access when you install it. So you can use whatever keyboard you want and it can’t call home.

    • jetsetdorito@lemmy.world
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      Tried it for a few minutes, it just feels off. It could just be the haptics? Idk this makes sense it just really makes me aware I’m typing on a screen

    • CoatGhost@lemmy.world
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      I do like FlorisBoard but japanese support is lacking it seems and as a learner, it made me have to go toward Gboard. Granted I am able to put GBoard behind a firewall and cut off it’s network connectivity.

    • genoxidedev1@kbin.social
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      Used FlorisBoard for a good while, it’s the perfect replacement imo. I don’t remember exactly but there was a certain feature missing for me so I uninstalled it but it may have been implemented by now.

  • AphoticDev@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    What do you mean, no competition? SwiftKey was the first to have swipe typing, and still does it best, because it learns how you swipe and adjusts itself for that.

      • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I loved Swype. Nuance made it a pile of shit though. One annoying thing after they bought it was that ‘K.’ would always autocorrect to K. d. Lang. You could not tell it to stop doing that.

        I use SwiftKey now. Microsoft is getting more of my data.

        • ijeff@lemdro.idM
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          I never ran into that issue, but it might be because I write okay!

  • gnzl@nc.gnzl.cl
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    I don’t know how much of a difference it makes in terms of Gboard phoning home, but you can disable a bunch of data sharing options in the Privacy section of Gboard’s settings: