Table of Contents
It’s common for many Android enthusiasts to customize their devices and while Swiftkey and GBoard are good alternatives, the companies behind them don’t have a good privacy record , this turns many people for other alternatives, many which are found in the Play-Store and F-droid repositories, I will compare them and give my opinion over which one is “the best”.
AnySoftKeyboard 🔗
This one is the most “feature-full” of all the ones I have found, since it’s the most customizable… at least for now…
You can change the bottom and top row based on a list of pre-sets.
There are over 17 skins loaded, however some of them are very meh… looking at you “Plain light” theme, and others are just slight modifications.
It also has glide typing which has been on beta for quite a while and I would say it’s better than Floris right now, there is also gestures and they have good choices.
One dislike I have over this Keyboard is that if you want a new language package, you have to install an “app” instead of using the System language configuration for this. If your language is not in the repo, then pick something else. I also cannot find documentation for making new layouts :/.
As a note: on F-droid their name and icon every few days, I don’t know if this is to blame on the F-droid build services or in the ASK metadata.
FlorisBoard 🔗
As of posting this article, I believe FlorisBoard is the most youngest alternative out there in F-droid, and it really looks like a good alternative for those who can’t or don’t like to use ASK.
It contains their own clipboard which is pretty nice since some phones don’t allow you to see the clipboard.
There are 8 themes: 3 day themes and 5 dark themes, and they all look good.
There is also a glide typing and gestures. I think Floris has better gestures than ASK but I might be a little biased.
Many features present in ASK will be here too, one of them being adaptative themes. Floris also has a better configuration app and other tiny good details, I think I will start recommending it once it leaves beta :).
OpenBoard 🔗
This is my mainly drive, at difference of ASK and FlorisBoard this one is very minimal. Some people compare the layout and design to GBoard too.
Configuration app is very “minimal”, in 3 panels you will change everything you need.
No gestures, no glide typing… so forget about that.
All themes are based on Material and they are very similar and very good. There is also 2 Holo themes if you like 2010’s style…
In general the presets are good enough, I have never experienced a lag or crash unlike others (FlorisBoard pleaseee…)
aaaaa 🔗
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Conclusions 🔗
Who won? aaaa, good night
