The successor of Openboard, Heliboard finally comes out in 1.0 my favorite open source keyboard out there.
HeliBoard with Swipe + FUTO have made replacing gboard possible for me. I feel like it’s been a 90% replacement, a far greater degree than some of the decent keyboards currently available. I regularly use but swipe and speech to text in two languages. I’m really really happy and grateful for these tools. 💜
Just in case I’m asked, here’s the basics steps to get it going:
- I downloaded the release from https://github.com/Helium314/HeliBoard and then installed. (Or set it up via Obtainium until its ready for F-Droid release)
- I downloaded the Swipe library linked on the HeliBoard Github page from here.
- Under HeliBoard settings -> advanced, I clicked “load gesture library” and selected the downloaded swipe library
- And for voice input, l downloaded Futo from the play store. FYI, it’s free and offline, but not FOSS.
That’s it.
Just setup the two apps with your specifics like the theme and etc. This is what mine looks like now:
How do you get your microphone option in the top right corner like that. Mine only shows up under the toolbar menu, after hitting the arrow key (top left corner)
You can tap and hold on the microphone button to pin it to the right.
This is a hot tip!
Exactly this. You can pin several functions this way.
Wow, that’s a gamechanger! HeliBoard has so many neat little tricks like that, but sometimes they’re hard to find.
Here’s another one then: in heliboard settings, go to about, and hit “Description of hidden features.” It’s where I found that, plus a few more neat tricks!
Thanks! 😁
This was very helpful, thank you.
Edit: is the FUTO app restricted in any way until I purchase premium?
Not that I’m aware of.
until its ready for F-Droid release
Just FYI, it is on IzzyOnDroid!
this is great. I’ve been looking for a gboard replacement for so long
minor thing: how do i import my personal dictionary from gboard? the github page says something about .dict files but gboard exported a zip with a .txt fileUnfortunately, I’m not familiar with importing and exporting personal dictionaries. I looked into it a bit, but wasn’t successful in finding anything relevant.
Hi! Started using heliboard a few weeks ago, but what are those other two?
HeliBoard board supports Swipe gestures and FUTO is a free, offline speech to text app that works incredibly well for me and the two languages I use.
Links and instructions here: https://lemmy.ca/comment/8335355
Thanks! Hadn’t found how to use swipe and thought it wasn’t supported Don’t use speech to text, but i was missing swiping
Am I understanding correctly, you can swipe in two languages without hitting a “switch language” button like on Gboard? If so I may have to make the switch
Unfortunately no. That’s remains part of the 10% that this solution doesn’t replicate 1:1. But… you can use a spacebar gesture (e.g. vertical swipe) to quickly change languages. Works like a charm.
Really wish you could speak punctuation with FUTO.
Oh my goodness yes! I say punctuations constantly out of habit and then have to edit them out. But I’m also really impressed with FUTOs ability to determine punctuation based on pauses.
Yes, don’t get me wrong, it is very, very, good. However I want full control over the characters being entered. I had thought that’s what “verbose” mode was going to be, but honestly I can’t figure out what that is.
This is the definitive replacement for gboard, people. It works fantastically well already with everything that Gboard has and it will only get better from here on.
Does it have multiple layouts support (Latin, Cyrillic), swipe typing and clipboard history?
Idk about layouts but swipe is available if you look into it, you just need to download a file to load the it into the keyboard and yes on clipboard history
Thanks, I’ll look into it.
Great piece of software!
I second this
Still waiting for Japanese support. At the moment the only decent Japanese keyboard on Android are either GBoard or Microsoft one unfortunately.
Have you tried fcitx with the Anthy plugin? I use that for Japanese.
Thank you for bringing up the app to me!
I started learning Japanese as I started using Heliboard, for now I just swap back when I need it. GBoard doesn’t play nice with the language button switching between apps so I just use the OS keyboard button and have the language button disabled everywhere, which also frees up some space!
Why do they always tell you it’s the successor of whatever, but never what it is for?
Read the whole sentence?
Why do I have to read a hole?
It was late…
It’s really great to see a continuation of Openboard.
TLDR: Why do I stop using OpenBoard and use this instead :)?
Openboard hasn’t updated in a year and a half
But how often do I need to update my keyboard lol?
If you’re satisfied with it, you don’t need to update. But Openboard lacks a lot of features many people want. The biggest of them is probably the glide typing, which Heliboard supports. And it also added a lot of quality of life improvements.
Some new features, bug fixes, and ongoing support.
It is a new application so you do have to set it up fresh - don’t switch until you have a bit of spare time.Missed the back and restore button in settings.Personally I’m on one of the fork’s beta versions. I’m waiting for the f-droid release so I get updates.
It is a new application so you do have to set it up fresh
You can import your OpenBoard settings
Found it. Thanks
Use Obtainium? I get updates from GitHub (and Fdroid) that way.
It has swipe typing plus a lot of other new features/theme customisation that openboard didn’t have.
Swiping
Looks nice but I wish the clipboard history could be based on number of items and not just time.
I’m sure that could be implemented.
This update somehow has broken haptic feedback on my keyboard 🤔
Thanks, not sure how I missed this!
Is this better in any way tohan florisboard? I’ve been using it (florisboard) for a year now and had no problems and have loved its features (especially the text navigation arrows and clipboard history).
Any idea when it’s going to be available in fdroid?
It’s on IzzyOnDroid repo
Thanks!
Clarifying: the app is there but not this latest update yet. It’ll have some delay. You can use obtanium if you don’t want to wait
Finally had a reason to try Obtanium. Picked it right up. Hopeful this can replace the watch I set in GitHub.
Thanks!
Did the same thing, but now I can see it was updated today in Izzy
Same, and my wasn’t that painless :)
Thanks, it doesn’t really matter, as long as it gets there eventually. I just don’t want to have to check for updates manually. Thanks again. I really appreciate it!
Just checked and it’s already updated there.
Yeah, I just got the update. Thanks buddy!
What happened to OpenBoard?
Development ceased.
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But now the key vibration is dead
Ahh So i am not the only one. hope it gets fixed soon.
yeah for me too. hopefully it will be fixed soon.
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a new update has been released a few hours ago and it’s been fixed
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Using it since version 14.1, as far as I remember but since then, I was finally able to replace gboard. Heli is really awesome. I always believed that florisboard will be my gboard replacement but for non-english swipe users nothing really changed or improved for years and then heli came out of the blue. Of course, it’s still a compromise compared to gboard and it probably always will be but to me it reached a point where this is minimal.
Yesterday I found out about the experimental dictionaries and imported them. Let’s see if there will be visible improvement. Does anyone have more experience with those dictionaries?
Been looking for a decent keyboard app, gonna try this out for sure 🙂