• Pennomi
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    1122 months ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]
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      62 months ago

      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.

  • NickwithaC
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    362 months ago

    We didn’t ask for the red to pink colour fade on the Youtube playbar either but here we are…

    • MaggiWuerze
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      222 months ago

      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

  • Otter
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    302 months ago

    Good time for FOSS keyboard apps to get some more love

    Heliboard and Futo were the recommendations from what I remember?

    • @[email protected]
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      112 months ago

      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.

      • @[email protected]
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        92 months ago

        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

        • @[email protected]
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          102 months ago

          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.

        • Ulrich
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          42 months ago

          The voice transcription is just OpenAI whisper but yeah it’s pretty great. I used it to write this.

        • CubitOom
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          22 months ago

          I haven’t had any of those issues. Out of curiosity, what version of futo keyboard are you running?

          • @[email protected]
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            12 months ago

            v0.1.24.1-playstore

            I made some changes as another poster suggested, doesnt look like it has made any differences yet though

      • @[email protected]
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        12 months ago

        Futo works really nice! Glide is pretty decent, though not as good as gboard’s. Wish it had custom background images though…

      • burgersc12
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        62 months ago

        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)

    • @[email protected]
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      52 months ago

      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.

    • Einar
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      32 months ago

      OpenBoard still works well for me. Including swiping and auto correct.

  • Curious Canid
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    222 months ago

    Circles are the worst possible shape in terms of making efficient use of the limited screen space available on a phone. The screen is rectangular and nearly everything we display falls into rectangular arrangements. Using circles just means there is less room on each key to show useful information, like the long-hold functions.

    I’m not opposed to change, but change entirely for the sake of change usually produces bad results.

    • @[email protected]
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      72 months ago

      I’m right there with you. I hate the current trend of rounded corners on everything. I know designers say it is more aesthetically pleasing, but to me it just looks like wasted space.

      • @[email protected]
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        12 months ago

        Depending on what you’re looking at, the goal is rarely to have stuff crammed into every pixel of the screen, at least on products that are well designed

        • @[email protected]
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          12 months ago

          I know that’s rarely the goal, but maybe it should be more of the goal. Sick of every app and webpage having these yawning chasms of useless white space

    • Victor
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      12 months ago

      I use GBoard (yeah I know, it’s just really good, but yes I am aware of the privacy concerns), but I use it without shapes. The letters and hold-characters are just… there, placed around in a qwerty arrangement. No “buttons”, so to say. I hope they don’t remove that functionality.

  • Witty Computer
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    202 months ago

    Don’t use gboard, rather download a keyboard from F-Droid and avoid the keylogging :-)

        • GreatWhiteBuffalo41
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          32 months ago

          For anyone like me who is still hanging on to gboard for swipe,

          I forgot until now 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.

      • @[email protected]
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        12 months ago

        I’ve been using FUTO which is free and open source, has pretty good gesture typing, very good voice to text, and does not connect to the internet. I’m happy with it, but I’m also an idiot and most things make me happy.

      • @[email protected]
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        12 months ago

        FUTO keyboard, Seriously, it’s way better than every other option I’ve looked into. Has material you design support.

        Also a l lot of cool in development features like on-device text correction and speech to text with local LLM processing.

        • noughtnaut
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          12 months ago

          Futo is great unless you constantly switch between several languages. 🥲

    • @[email protected]
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      1 month ago

      Or at least use SwiftKey, and turn off mobile and wifi in app settings, something you cannot do for pre-installed apps like gboard

  • @[email protected]
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    152 months ago

    Late-stage tech bros, devoid of innovation and flailing at their precious cup game.

    I’m so over this garbage. RIP smartphones.

  • @[email protected]
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    2 months ago

    I wanna switch to FOSS alternatives but swiping is either funky (FUTO) or not available for now (Floris). I ended up downgrading gboard to an older version since all this emoji stuff (especially the bitmoji sticker nonsense) really grinds my gears.

  • Onno (VK6FLAB)
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    122 months ago

    For about a decade now google has been changing shit for no particular reason, this is just the latest.

    • @[email protected]
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      42 months ago

      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.

        • @[email protected]
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          12 months ago

          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

    • Scrubbles
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      32 months ago

      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.

      • Onno (VK6FLAB)
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        32 months ago

        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.

        • @[email protected]
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          22 months ago

          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.

          • @[email protected]
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            02 months ago

            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.

    • @[email protected]
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      22 months ago

      That’s just their way they keep it alive. If it were actually good, Google would cancel it.

      • Khrux
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        12 months ago

        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.

    • @[email protected]
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      12 months ago

      Basically, they have nothing else to do, so they just throw shit at the wall to see what sticks.

  • CubitOom
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    112 months ago

    All I want is for gboard to stop hijacking my default keyboard. I set futo for a reason and I meant it.

      • CubitOom
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        2 months ago

        wrong

        Edit: just noticed it also keeps turning on background mobile data usage dispite me having explicitly disabled that.

          • qupada
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            72 months ago

            Yes, but you shouldn’t.

            After a reboot, a lot of phones can only use the device’s default keyboard app for entering the unlock pin/password.

            If you’ve removed or disabled it, you can get into a situation where you have no keyboard at all, and a delightful chicken-and-egg situation of needing a keyboard you don’t have until after unlocking the device to enter the code to unlock the device.

            (A USB keyboard will let you escape this, for what that’s worth)

            • @[email protected]
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              2 months ago

              I removed (not really, it shows “Not installed for this user” in All apps list) GBoard using Canta and nothing is happening. I use Yandex Keyboard.

          • merde alors
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            2 months ago

            yes, you can. I think it was these 2 lines ☞

            adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.touchtype.swiftkey

            adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.swiftkey.swiftkeyconfigurator

            @[email protected]

          • CubitOom
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            52 months ago

            This is a pixel 8 running stock android 15. There is no option to disable unlike other preinstalled apps.

    • Curious Canid
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      62 months ago

      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.

      • Zippythezigzag
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        32 months ago

        Ahh. I only use it occasionally. I’m bad at spelling and need the word predictions too much.

      • GreatWhiteBuffalo41
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        2 months ago

        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.