I love swiping for speed, because it's usually faster than tapping and easy to do one-handed, but then there are always a bunch of words that are too similar that it can never get right, it doesn't deal well with doubled vs single letters, etc.<p>So for the longest time, I've wanted a new keyboard layout specifically designed for swiping. In the same way that Dvorak was optimized for ergonomically typing English words, I want a keyboard layout designed to minimize word overlap/ambiguity when swiping.<p>It doesn't even necessarily have to have 26 keys, e.g. maybe there could be one key overloaded for v/w/x/z (and you long-press it if you ever want to type a single letter). On the other hand, maybe there need to be separate keys for 'e' and 'ee', or a special key for "double the previous letter".<p>Because I <i>love</i> swiping, but all my problems with it come from the fact that the QWERTY layout is far from ideal for it. I am 100% willing to learn a new layout if anyone will develop an optimal one for English so that swiping has a 99.9% accuracy rate instead of what currently feels more like 90% or 95%.
FUTO Swipe supports ClearFlow, which is exactly what you are talking about, a keyboard layout optimized for swiping: <a href="https://clearflowkeyboard.github.io/" rel="nofollow">https://clearflowkeyboard.github.io/</a><p><a href="https://github.com/futo-org/futo-keyboard-layouts/issues/163" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/futo-org/futo-keyboard-layouts/issues/163</a>
I switched to ClearFlow a month or two ago after learning of it on Hackernews. It is available in GBoard.<p>I'm happy with the switch. Like any keyboard switch (I've gone from Qwerty to Dvorak and now a Colemak-dh derivative with about ten years on each) it takes some time to learn the layout. Overall I'm happy with it though and there are less frustrating misinterpretations and corrections needed.<p>This post was swiped on it with only two corrections and the second one was my fault as i misremembered a key location.
I have been a ClearFlow user for over a year now. Generally I like it, but there absolutely are still common words that are hard to input consistently. The THEA cluster has given me no shortage of problems. Still a fan though.
I'd like to know where did they get the stats ClearFlow mentions in their site (reducing backspace corrections by 37.5% and shortening finger gliding distance by 41.6%.) and see what method did they use to analyze those swipe patterns and create .<p>It could be interesting for applying it to different languages (or modified word corpus).
Does It work for non English languages?
This is interesting. Though it doesn't seem like it'd translate well to a physical keyboard, leaving me with two different layouts to work with.<p>Maybe I'm mistaken though. Are there any physical clearflow keyboards? Are they any good, or does clearflow really only work well with swipe?
Using a physical clearflow keyboard sounds like a nightmare - they're just designed for very different input models
The thumb typing muscle memory does not translate to finger typing at all. Most Dvorak or Colemak users are comfortable using QWERTY on their phones. Clearflow really only works well with swipe.
I'm using Colemak on my phone, but can't get used to it on my desktop, so I'm stuck with QWERTY! :D
No, not muscle memory, but at least the idea of knowing where keys are. I'd bet that non-qwerty typers mostly started with qwerty and possibly still need to use it on some occasions, so they remember.
interesting, tying this. thanks
> Because I love swiping, but all my problems with it come from the fact that the QWERTY layout is far from ideal for it. I am 100% willing to learn a new layout if anyone will develop an optimal one for English so that swiping has a 99.9% accuracy rate instead of what currently feels more like 90% or 95%.<p>90-95% is a very good estimate! That's about what we measure on our test set. I have good news for you, and we will have a blog post about it soon. Because of how our models are built, we are able to optimize for detection accuracy directly by constructing synthetic swipes on each layout for ~50k words, and then testing them through the model. We tested around 800,000 layouts this way.<p>The biggest issue with QWERTY is that there are far too many words that swipe colinear or obtuse angle letter trigrams. These are both hard to detect and frustrating for swipe users, because you can't clearly indicate the letters you're gesturing. Neural swipe models (at least ours) look for indicators in the gesture pattern that suggests a user was targeting a specific letter, rather than trying to match a gesture shape like algorithmic detection does.<p>The shape of the keyboard can significantly improve the way the gestures are formed so that there is better indication of letters. The model can still respond to dwell times because unlike shape matching it uses the temporal information. But dwell interrupts flow, and in my opinion should be minimized in swipe layouts.
How about context. We have these not-so-new gadgets made by design to predict the next word, I mean those LLMs... a local tiny model should be able to beat those dumb GBoard predictions any time (and a note for Google: if GBoard uses already such a local predictor, just throw it away, it's garbage)
Have you ever tried:<p><a href="http://networkimprov.net/alphatap/light.html" rel="nofollow">http://networkimprov.net/alphatap/light.html</a><p>It was set up for just this.<p>c.f., the opensource research project Dasher<p><a href="https://www.inference.org.uk/dasher/" rel="nofollow">https://www.inference.org.uk/dasher/</a>
I wouldn't mind if similar _common_ words are mixed up. But the current state of the iOS keyboard and also gBoard is that it sometimes just makes really unhinged suggestions (at least in my native german). Words I never used before and that I didn't even know existed. I think a small AI layer on top would probably fix that, just the likelihood of next words multiplied somehow with what I possible could have swiped.
My guess is that an AI layer already present _is_ the reason you're seeing these unhinged suggestions.
Earlier generation iOS keyboards were much more accurate and reasonable.
In German, it's also extremely annoying that even common compound words will not be suggested. Google Keyboard has somewhat improved here, but FUTO Keyboard still drops the ball on this completely.
> it doesn't deal well with doubled vs single letters, etc.<p>You mean like the two E’s in “feel” or the two L’s in “fell”? I just tried and it handles them well. Are you aware of the circling technique? When you want to double up on a letter, you briefly circle it slightly. I believe some keyboards let you hover momentarily without circling.<p>Try it, swipe F-E-L, it should complete to “fell”, then do the same thing again but form a small, tight circle over the E, it should then complete to “feel”. Works for me every time.
On the iPhone at least, following your instructions, I got anything from ‘feel’ to ‘fell’ to ‘grok’ to ‘felt’.<p>Is it possible that your keyboard’s particular dictionary knows the words you’re more likely to use and adjusts for it?<p>Edit - Also got ‘grill’. Notice how the -t in felt and -I- in grill are not near path to L.
My guess is you are deleting the word each time. Unlike the FUTO keyboard, the iPhone keyboard will give you different results each time after you delete because it assumes that if you delete a word, it’s probably because the autocomplete got it wrong, so it gives you a different result on the next try.<p>A workaround is to use the Notes app and use the return key to make a new line after each try, rather than deleting. That should give you more consistent results.
Back when I was using QWERTY with Microsoft SwiftKey, I used to swipe a bit, but it never really felt comfortable for me. I've tried swiping again after switching to Colemak on my phone and everything is so close together that the accuracy is very low. I wonder if this model will help improve accuracy on other layouts too (or even languages!).<p>I hope FUTO does start caring about language support, because for example their AI powered text prediction is only available for English. I'd happily train a model for them in my native language if they provided instructions on how to do so. And I'd help with swipe typing too.
Blast from the past here for you, probably not relevant any more, but a cool reimagining of gesture interfaces:<p><a href="https://www.the8pen.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.the8pen.com/</a><p>Edit: apparently there's a modern successor? <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=inc.flide.vi8">https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=inc.flide.vi8</a>
If, as there, one swipe gesture per letter is allowable, rather than a gesture encompassing a whole word, then things like Thumb-Key become options.<p>* <a href="https://github.com/dessalines/thumb-key" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/dessalines/thumb-key</a><p>It has a similar sort of '<i>It doesn't have to have 26 keys on something the size and shape of a mobile 'phone.</i>' thinking as 8vim has, whilst raising a good '<i>You know 'phones worked fine with a 3 by 4 grid for 60 years, ne?</i>' point, but adding a modern twist of '<i>We can swipe, in the 21st century.</i>' to the old notion of multiple letters on a button.<p>There are still these people thinking outside of the typewriter-keyboard-on-a-'phone box. (-:
Thumb-Key is awesome and I can't live without it. Clearflow sounds promising too, but I have to be able to write my,, repeated symbols and >:) smiley faces with the same speed and finesse as words (not having to thing about it at all).
But why would you want to? Pro-tip, I guess, ",," is normal in German and maybe other languages as a method of quoting, but it looks bizarre in English.
I really liked this in the day (and i just played with the version you linked and can still remember all the key patterns - I'm typing this comment with it now).<p>But it just can't touch swiping for speed. Frankly, the keyboard I miss most is the T9 predictive text from my old school pre smart phone era.<p>Nothing has come close to the same expressiveness and speed while being usable completely blind, only by feel.<p>I do feel like mobile keyboards have stagnated in a bad spot, though.
Correction seems so mutton handed - I don't understand why, when I position the cursor for a correction it doesn't stem/postfix the word to offer options.<p>In fact (with Gboard) the suggestions don't change with cursor position. Surely, when I place the cursor you the right of a letter I'm planning on removing that letter, or adding a letter, but the suggestions don't change according to cursor placement.<p>There's also no apparent frecency - I had to correct cursor every time.<p>I swiped "frecency" as "decency" - corrections offered were "d doubt difference". The swipes for those are wildly different. d->e is NNW (350°), d->i, d->o is ENE (~70°).<p>It's really so basic. Surely they can do better than this.
I have been wanting this for a while. I currently use dvorak with the split mode that happens when the phone is horizontal for good typing speed.
I've been using this keyboard on and off for a while now. I've always switched back to gboard, however this update made me convert full time. It's really good.<p>There are a few issues, like it randomly capitalizes words in the middle of sentences. Also, it doesn't seem to take context into account when suggesting words, so words that clearly wouldn't follow the last word will often show up.<p>It's not as good as gboard yet, but close enough that I'm going to stick with it.<p>Note that if you have a more powerful device, you can get larger models for voice and larger dictionaries from their site. They make a noticeable difference.<p>The only fundamental issue I have with it, they seem to be ideologically opposed to adding a GIF search, which I miss occasionally. <a href="https://github.com/futo-org/android-keyboard/issues/293#issuecomment-3024858791" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/futo-org/android-keyboard/issues/293#issu...</a>
We sound similar. I have found that the voice to text can often just randomly start spitting out emojis. Did you find that?
Good. That's a silly thing to have in a keyboard. No silly childish gifs that I can accidentally click on is a great feature.
worse, there's silly keys you can accidentally click and type out flibbertigibbet. very childish
Ah, a refined gentleman, more mature than Swiss cheese.
Fun fact for the first apple keyboard layout on the first iphone, the touchscreen hadn't the resolution to tell appart which letter you meant to type in, so it changed dynamically the "hitboxes" of the letter buttons when you typed a certain letter. (for instance if you typed the letter "i", the hitbox of "t", and "n" were changed to be bigger, because there is a high probability you were hitting those next. Here is an article that talks about it : <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/26/creation-of-the-first-iphone-touchscreen-interview-with-scott-forstall-tony-fadell-and-greg-christie.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/26/creation-of-the-first-iphone...</a>
<i>>the touchscreen hadn't the resolution to tell appart which letter you meant to type in</i><p>Is that really true? My memory of the original iPhone's touch screen is that it was pretty much pixel-accurate.<p>The article mentions that <i>the keyboard</i> wasn't accurate enough: <i>"But by early 2006, the iPhone keyboard still didn’t have the accuracy Apple needed to ship the phone."</i> I don't think that means the screen wasn't accurate; all it means is that the original iPhone had a small screen, so the buttons on the keyboard were tiny, and hitting them precisely was difficult. That's why the hit boxes of more likely keys were enlarged.
FUTO keyboard actually has an option for this (enabled by default) called "Smart key-hit detection". It adjusts hitboxes based on dictionary predictions for what you just typed.
Awesome. I've been using FUTO keyboard for two years now and it's the best free & private keyboard I found, but swiping has been really bad for all these keyboards which was such a pain because I use swiping a lot.<p>Nice to see the hour of swiping I did adding to their dataset actually helped. I'm using it now and it feels as good as the Google keyboard.<p>Edit: It is sending me a little that it keeps swiping "whats" instead of "what's" though, hopefully they fix that later.
For anyone wondering: the library uses the GPLv3 (good) while the Android keyboard uses the Futo License (shit).<p>- <a href="https://gitlab.futo.org/keyboard/swipe-library/-/blob/master/LICENSE?ref_type=heads" rel="nofollow">https://gitlab.futo.org/keyboard/swipe-library/-/blob/master...</a><p>- <a href="https://github.com/futo-org/android-keyboard/blob/master/LICENSE.md" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/futo-org/android-keyboard/blob/master/LIC...</a>
To add to the license complexity, the model uses another FUTO-written license, though it at least does not seem as bad as the license for the keyboard:<p><a href="https://huggingface.co/futo-org/futo-swipe/blob/main/LICENSE.md" rel="nofollow">https://huggingface.co/futo-org/futo-swipe/blob/main/LICENSE...</a>
What's particularly objectionable about the Futo License?<p>Is it this part?<p><i>you may not remove or obscure any functionality in the software related to payment to the Licensor in any copy you distribute to others.</i>
The clause you cited as well as the "Termination" section and the non-commercial restriction make it a non-free license. Besides the direct issues with that, it also means all software covered by this license is unsuitable for FOSS-only distributions like Debian or F-Droid. It's not entirely clear to me if the license is copyleft; derivative works have similar problems if so.<p>As an aside, Eron Wolf, the billionaire behind FUTO, has some rather... out of touch views[0] on the meaning of open source, and seems very committed to diluting the term to mean something closer source-available by removing the most of the rights granted (as defined by FSF, OSI, DFSG and others).<p>[0]: <a href="https://gitlab.futo.org/eron/public/-/wikis/Thoughts-on-Open-Source" rel="nofollow">https://gitlab.futo.org/eron/public/-/wikis/Thoughts-on-Open...</a> - please keep in mind that the RMS quote at the top is taken out of context; he is arguing for more freedom, not less
> Futo License (shit)<p>Clearly not a cuck license (<a href="https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/why-i-use-the-gpl-and-not-cuck-licenses/" rel="nofollow">https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/why-i-use-the-gpl-and-not-cuc...</a>) so looks good to me.
> <i>shit</i><p>It's just a commercial license with very mild terms.
Yeah, honestly. I love open source as much as the next guy, but I don't understand why people are so up in arms about this. The license feels pretty reasonable.<p>The source code is fully available, none of the features are paywalled. They only prohibit you from taking their code and reselling it.<p>If you take a look at the Play Store, there are thousands of instances where open source projects are lazily renamed and sold for $5 or $10. It's the definition of scummy, pathetic, worthless behavior, and I'm glad the license prevents those kinds of leeches from succeeding.<p>I know this isn't the only case, but it's the majority of cases. So I have no problem with their license at all.
The license doesn't prevent those leeches from succeeding. They will republish your app, whether it is fully proprietary or licensed under the GPLv3, and neither Google nor Apple will respond to takedown requests for apps. We get many reports of this behavior in an Android developer community I help moderate, it's pretty obvious there are a few known actors doing this with hundreds of apps, and the stores don't care.<p>So no, the license doesn't matter.
Yeah, it's pretty pathetic on Google and Apple's part.<p>It might be not a foolproof solution, but I think the license is better than nothing. Then you have a legal precedent that you can cite when you file a lawsuit against these rats.<p>Most of these people doing this probably aren't in the same country. But whatever. It's better than nothing.
> They only prohibit you from taking their code and reselling it.<p>They prohibit you from removing the constant nags about buying a licence.
The nags that you <i>could</i> just click "I bought a license" to remove without actually buying one?<p>Or you know, also buy the license and click it honestly.
I know a way you could remove those nags.
I know two:<p>1. Paying and clicking “I paid”<p>2. Not paying and still clicking “I paid”<p>So it’s an honour system right now.<p>That said, if they ever implement e.g. license keys or some other mean of <i>actually</i> checking that you’ve paid, seems that you would be able to remove it and recompile, you just can’t help others do that:<p>> Notwithstanding the above, you may not remove or obscure any functionality in the software related to payment to the Licensor in any copy you distribute to others.<p>(IANAL)
It's just another proprietary software, on the lesser evil side of spectrum.
The reason for people being so up in arms about it, is because voting for lesser evil makes it greater.
The reason I prefer open-source software is that I can inspect and modify the source code if I want to. With this license, I can still do that, even if it’s not technically “open-source™” by the OSI definition. Therefore, I don’t see a reason to object to it. The OSI definition is made for the benefit of big corporations, not people like me.
swype was so good before it got destroyed by Nuance. Gboard's own swipe to type is decent but missing a lot of those features that made swype so much better (swipe once backwards to erase the previous word, loop a letter to double it, swipe up to the suggested word to select it, correct a previous word with the next few words context...)
It requires more precision than Swype, but GBoard supports multi-word word deletion if you swipe back originating from the backspace key. You get some haptic feedback, and can scrub to adjust the selected boundary.<p>Unfortunately some of those Swype nicities are patented [1], so other keyboards can't use them.<p>[1]: <a href="https://patents.google.com/patent/US7098896B2/en" rel="nofollow">https://patents.google.com/patent/US7098896B2/en</a>
Very cool. I'm a big fan of swipe. So much so that a bunch of us a Grammarly re-implemented it using a similar technique about 2 years ago on the Grammarly iOS keyboard, so if you want to experience something similar on iOS, you can head to the app store <a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/grammarly-ai-keyboard-notes/id1158877342">https://apps.apple.com/us/app/grammarly-ai-keyboard-notes/id...</a> and use the qwerty english keyboard layout to get this neural net version of swipe.<p>See <a href="https://www.grammarly.com/blog/engineering/deep-learning-swipe-typing/" rel="nofollow">https://www.grammarly.com/blog/engineering/deep-learning-swi...</a> for more details - it's very similar to the architecture described by the FUTO folks.<p>One key difference is that the learned model does not decode in a context sensitive manner but does it a word at a time. The main reason is because we wanted to release this soon and wanted the user's personal dictionary (i.e. contact names, etc... to show up correctly when swiped). It would have been nice if we could have followed through with the context sensitive decoding as described by the FUTO folks. It would really help with accuracy when dealing with words like:<p>1. (food, good, hood)
2. (you, toy, rot)
3. (our, or, it)
etc...<p>(Disclaimer: I am one of the authors of the Grammarly swipe system as described in the linked blog post).
FUTO has gone from tolerable to pretty great over the past year-ish. Sure, the (english) auto-completion still may not be the "best," but I generally find it better than my iPad auto-completion. Thou, my fav-features are pretty simple: the ability to pin dedicated action buttons like undo/redo/select-all, and direct control over my clipboard history. The clipboard does come with hard max limits of 100 items and 336 hours, but since FUTO is open-source, all one has to do is clone, patch, compile, and voila, unlimited clipboard history! And they say dreams don't come true.
After experiencing Nintype on iOS many years ago, I can't use any other swipe keyboard anymore. I'm stuck using the stock keyboard for typing, and sometimes (rarely) swiping a word or two when I din't have two hands available. Swiping (with one finger) when holding my phone with both hands just feels unnatural and sluggish. I wish Apple had just bought/sherlocked Nintype and integrated it into the stock keyboard.
Omg I was using that too! I was actually wondering whether FUTO had any features that supported typing one word with multiple concurrent (or not) swipes. I guess it does not but dang what a blast from the past. I had forgotten the app name too! Was using it since before Apple started actually allowing third party keyboards officially
Completely agree! The author made a buggy android port of nintype (called keyboard 69) that I used for years. The UX was incredible, and every swipe system I've tried since feels downright clumsy by comparison. Two finger swipe is peak ergonomics, but unfortunately I think it's an innovation that's simply too niche.
Looks like they are working on multi-finger swipe for the keyboard, the library seems to support it [0].<p>> The library also supports recognizing two-finger simultaneous swipe input through the SwipeEngine::recognize_multi method.<p>[0]: <a href="https://gitlab.futo.org/keyboard/swipe-library#inputs" rel="nofollow">https://gitlab.futo.org/keyboard/swipe-library#inputs</a>
Heliboard (f-droid) supports two thumb swipe! Not as good as nintype but works very well
Yes! Nintype is incredible and is the only reason I refuse to upgrade my phone.
What I really want is a swipe model that can tune to multiple languages simultaneously when a keyboard layout can support it (English + German, German + French, etc). I rarely need more than 2 languages simultaneously, but the "switching between 2 languages" point is painful.
Trilingual here. Gboard on my pixel 10 pro does support swipe type while code switching between multiple languages. Works reasonably well. Accuracy is a bit lower for words that are collisions across languages
Yes, this is a showstopper for me. Preciso escrever in several languages.
This would be cool. I suspect that people don't implement this model because it's a long tail of users requesting this. This is totally feasible technically.
That's neat! Would love to try it, but am also on iOS :/<p>With the risk of sounding like a broken record - what are people using on iOS? I've been using `SwiftKey` for a while as it has dictionaries for languages that the native keyboard doesn't have. But I would love to switch to something else, as M$ has been shoving AI features on it that I am definitely not interested in.<p>So far in this thread I've seen Grammarly and Nintype. The former seems to suffer from the same things as SwiftKey, while the latter doesn't look it's maintained (last update 7y ago). I don't mind a paid app, as long as it doesn't invade my privacy.
Futo with the new swipe model is the first android keyboard i've used that I don't feel like i'm compromising vs GBoard.<p>Integrated speak to text, good autocorrect typing, good autocorrect swiping.
edit: NOT guaranteed to be free and open! seems to have a confusing license setup. Boooo! Works good though, I'll take it over Gboard.<p>This is such a massive deal. This is, as far as I can tell, the first useful free and open Swipe model. This paves the way for things like swipe typing on platforms other than iOS and Android, a major pain point to newcomer OSes.
I'm curious to see how it deals with dual languages - ie. not switching between them, but using two languages in the same sentence like the google keyboard supports out of the box.<p>my biggest issue is that i make up a lot of words as i type and the google dictionary for icelandic is .. well it can never be fully complete because of the way the language works, so dictionary words are always a mess.
They have a multilingual input mode that also works with swipe input! I've tried it briefly with Swedish/English on a Swedish keyboard and it switched between languages in the same sentence in a way that made sense to me, but I had to download a separate dictionary.
> because of the way the language works<p>What's the problem of Icelandic? Is it because you stick words together like in Danish or German?
For us sad iOS people, what's your favorite swiping keyboard? I just use the stock Apple one because custom keyboards can still be a little buggy (eg not loading occasionally).
I still use Gboard. It's pretty old now and hasn't been updated in a long time, but it still works.<p>Every year, I try the stock iOS keyboard, but then I always go back.
I found GBoard crashed often but was very good and had the wonderful built-in calculator, not available on Android anymore. Still the case?<p>Boy did I hate when a "secure" input came up and I was forced to use the default keyboard.
For a long time apple keyboard did not support my language (czech), I would use gboard. And yes, it is still slightly better than the Apple one, but the switching is buggy and the problem is on the apple side.
Occasional bug is worse than permanent suffering?
Well, iOS swipe keyboard is not that bad. I would not call it “permanent suffering”. I tried gboard and swiftkey and they aren’t a <i>giant</i> improvement over the stock keyboard these days. They used to be.<p>Wrt the “occasional bug”, what happens is that sometimes (enough to make it bad) the keyboard doesn’t render at all!
What happens is you simply toggle the keyboard field off /on in th the same or a different app, a simple albeit slightly annoying fix.<p>But in general, there is no <i>giant improvement</i>, none of the major ones are even competent enough to figure out a grid of numbers is better than a row, but Apple is even worse - it doesn't even let you type a number on long hold, for some reason thinking that a letter ų you'll never type in your English life is a better alternative<p>To me, not being able to type in numbers easily is a permanent suffering, though ok, not the end of the world<p>And unfortunately don't think there is a single swipe keyboard that's properly customizable to fix those glaring issues...
This keyboard seems to ship with a dictionary that includes a lot of curse words. No more ducking around.
I can't see what's wrong with that (you choose whether to accept suggestions or not), but you can always blacklist predictions by long-pressing on them.
What dictionary are you using? I installed the app on android and am not able to type "fuck", neither with the inbuilt dictionary nor from an imported English (UK) dictionary from their site. Even typing it manually doesn't seem to add it to the dictionary, which makes it really annoying to use.
Great timing given I just installed SwiftKey since Microsoft has started embedding ads and dark pattern redirects to Bing!
You meant uninstalled, right ?<p>It’s unfortunate that the Bing team at Microsoft has so much power. They destroy products for the glory of Bing, and some money. Perhaps it’s about the money. But I feel like Microsoft doesn’t have to make a lot of money on everything they do.
Has to be. I jumped from SwiftKey the moment I heard Microsoft bought it, back in '14 IIRC.
Hahaha, yes. Though now I'm imagining an incredible alternative world where I only install the most enshittified pieces of software.
Assuming you mean uninstall, yeah I did the same because of that.<p>I wasn getting a constant panel from them regarding using the backup feature, that will just keep re appearing.<p>It was so bad I even moved to GBoard. Not the same, but I'm getting used to.
Voice dictation is so much better than GBoard, which I've been using until now. It capitalizes and punctuates sentences without me needing to, and got several sentences perfect without any post-editing needed, and it's all a local model. The one downside is no real-time update, just batch conversion once you're done talking. Looks like they've fixed the swipe backspace and spacebar to not be over-sensitive like it was a year or two ago when I last tried (and allowed some customization).
I'm actually surprised with how bad is Google's voice recognition - with all their immense compute resources, R&D, owning Android, etc, what prevents them from having SotA voice recognition?.. Even "it's not a priority" argument doesn't work as they are pushing Gemini assistant. (ChatGPT app works so much better.)
It has gotten very good but my brain is much worse at producing intelligible speech than it is at writing. I end up having to edit a lot anyway, which is hard with voice.
gboard has voice dictation and it has real-time update
It would be nice if there was a swipe typing keyboard that was similar to Chinese/Japanese IMEs where you can swipe out a full phrase and the keyboard can use it to fix short/ambiguous words based on context. Today, when I'm swipe typing sloppily, it can be hard to distinguish between pairs like on/in, of/if/I'd, it's/its, etc
I've been using FUTO voice input for several month. It's not perfect as I have to manually do the correction like always. However, it definitely saves me some time and effort. It also helps me to degoogle, starting from gboard.<p>Apparently this new swipe function is tied to FUTO keyboard. I don't use the FUTO keyboard as there is no support for the language I use intensively. Nevertheless, this line of work deserves more recognition.
As a FUTO keyboard user for about a year I'm quite excited for this!<p>Their local voice transcription is top notch and proper swipe gestures would be icing on the cake.<p>Now to fix that issue there tapping "Tuesd" sometimes suggests "Thursday"
Ah nice they do have a VR demo <a href="https://swipe.futo.tech/vr-swipe-small.mp4" rel="nofollow">https://swipe.futo.tech/vr-swipe-small.mp4</a> ... now I'm wondering if there is a WASM version so that it can be used in WebXR.
I always liked their voice dictation because it's better than Samsungs or Googles while it's on device. It's super fast and puts in punctuation in, etc.<p>The keyboard on the other hand I never really liked for some reason which I can't even explain clearly. So for the keyboard I've been using <a href="https://github.com/HeliBorg/HeliBoard" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/HeliBorg/HeliBoard</a> for ever, but it does not have sviping.<p>I might try FUTO Swipe just to test it.
Not only does heliboard have swiping, it has two finger swipe, which is more than 2x better than one finger swipe!
Heliboard does have swiping! You just have to manually download the GBoard swiping library and upload it in the app.
This is amazing! It's driven me nuts for a very long time that so many mobile keyboards allow totally non-sequitur nonsensical sequence completions.<p>In particular, if you end up using the voice input mode of it and have trouble with accuracy, I would giving a try to the biggest model that it supports. It's slower (although really not bad at all on my Galaxy Fold), but it's so nice to have it actually be as accurate as it is.
Very cool, I use swipe typing almost exclusively so good to see open models. It just needs to preserve word history for custom words, not sure if it does that.
Can it do two finger swipe like Heliboard? Must have feature for modern swipe keyboard
Love swipe typing. Nice to see more keyboards in the space.
Finally! Usable! Between this and the excellent dictation, it's finally looking good enough that I can probably recommend it to anyone.
Would love an iOS version! The keyboard landscape on iOS is grim, and gboard hasn't received updates in years.
Absolutely cool demo. I used to love this feature in SwiftKey. It still works but after their acquisition by Microsoft they've gone downhill. I've since switched to iOS but would love to try Futo out when it's available for iOS
I've been using the new swipe for a few days and it's truly excellent.
Lots to be desired, unfortunately. I tried 3 different words. It nailed the first 2 but the third was impossible: The word "serverside" is impossible to swipe. I tried 10x, never did it even come close.
Interesting, I just tried it and it got server-side the first try, although it wants to insert a hyphen. I did download the larger dictionary from their site.
I don't think server side is in their dict without a dash. I don't know how to type dashed words in swipe. SwiftKey cant do it either. Long words usually work very well though. That's most of what I use swipe for. Short words I tap, long words I swipe.<p>e.g.,<p>Broadside Surfside integration financially illiterate calibration fantastical proliferation haphazardly horrifically striations proliferation (all typed first or second try except antidisestablishmentarianism which admittedly I got carried away)
Looking at the example videos, specially the VR one, I can't help but think that this gives every <i>word</i> its own unique shape. For example, the word "model" got shape matching infinity symbol.
I've been using HeliBoard for a while now, but IIRC the swipe library it uses is from Google (have to install it separately to comply with license). Wonder how this stacks up.
I am a heliboard user myself and im only just trying this new keyboard out but at least right now it feels faster and has all the goodies I want in a soft keyboard.<p>1. super responsive<p>2. arrow keys!! why this is impossible is beyond me<p>3. easy access to text editor and undo redo via the long pressing of the enter button<p>4. easy resizing and im using a floating mode so it's all near my thumb and no awkward bends, just my phone being too heavy for my pinky because phones are massive these days<p>5. offline voice is comparable at a glance to the offline voice input app I was using with heliboard. that's with their biggest ugliest English model and my phone is from 2022 at the newest.<p>6. have I mentioned how performance is great on this app yet? pleasantly surprised.<p>y'all do you but I am keeping this FUTO keyboard.
Must say it's a little bit lame that they are boycotting iOS. I will not change phone just to use this app but it would be nice to be able to replace SwiftKey with this.
I'm pretty sure there is no way for them to supply an ios version without having to go through some sort of apple approval process. hardly boycotting to say that you're not about to put up with that crap.
true... there are many better reasons to leave iOS than for a keyboard
I assume it would be feasible for someone else to write an iOS keyboard relying on this model?
Where did they say they were boycotting iOS?
boycotting?
If this can learn my patterns, that itself is enough.
Google Keyboard used to do this, but mysteriously doesn't do it anymore.
Sounds good but the big problem I have with futo key board is that it can only do one language at a time. With gboard I can swipe type al 3 languages I speak without having to constantly switch. I wish they could make that.
On the one hand snapping to the nearest English word is useful. On the other hand it will prevent our language from evolving.
I can't speak for this keyboard, but at least on Gboard, if you type out a word a few times, it'll be stored in its suggestions dictionary and you'll be able to swipe type it.
The first two words i tried to type were both "hello" and I got "help" and "hell" as first suggestions. I'm not sure if the web app is using the same algo but that's an immediate ick.
> Your keyboard shouldn't connect to the internet.<p>Amen. Glad to see that companies like that still exist.
Apple’s swipe to text is so good that I forget there’s still work to be done in the space. Great stuff FUTO.
Is there some sort of swipe data standard? If there were, it feels like getting a few proper OSS projects going might start to shift things in the right direction (assuming they cracked a way to share a bit of anonymized data)
The swipe demo on the website is neat! I wasn't expecting to be able to use it with my mouse.
Awesome project!! I will migrate off from gboard when support for Norwegian gets better.
The demo at least doesn't support tapping, which makes it a nope for me, even if the swiping experience hadn't been ~hank~ ~help~ hello world.
Oh frabjous day! I've waited YEARS for something like this. THANK YOU FUTO!
This is building on quick sand, a truly new model would not use the same dumb old grid that's neither fit for hands nor for fingers.
But kudos for the openness!
I'm curious how it compares with Microsoft SwiftKey. Obviously, that's not an open-source app, but it would be an interesting benchmark.
I've been using SwiftKey for 10 years (typing not swiping), and test ran FUTO for the last month.<p>FUTO improved a lot (I had tried it a year earlier also) but SwiftKey's suggestions are still a lot better in my opinion.
With SwiftKey I can just type roughly in the right spot without looking and the correct words will come out most of the time. FUTO still suggests a lot of nonsensical next words that just do not follow after the previous in English.<p>I hope it improves further so I can switch.<p>The voice models are great though, and they can be used as part of the keyboard or standalone.
I'm also a heavy SwiftKey user, but donated some money to futo last year in hopes they improve the keyboard.<p>SwiftKey got annoying with pushing Ai image Gen and sometimes pop-ups.
what languages it support? They only mention "language-agnostic".
Does anyone know of a FOSS keyboard that supports swiping in Korean? I'm yet to find one
I don't really get swiping. It's always going to be quicker and more efficient to type because you can use both hands, right? And you don't have to swipe your finger across the screen?<p>Still going strong with Fleksy even though you can't even download it anymore.
Swiping with one finger is faster than typing with two in my experience. But you can have best of both worlds, my keyboard let's me swipe with two fingers at the same time (heliboard on f-droid)
Sometimes you have one hand full. When my kids were small, especially, I REALLY benefited from swipe typing. I still often use it when I am holding something in one hand.
It traces back to accessibility. Think of folks with shaky hands. The screen helps to stabilize the tremors. A similar thing applies to typing on a bumpy bus or while walking.<p>That said, it also depends on screen size. Back when Swype first became popular, Android screen sizes ranged from 3-5". That was another factor driving it's popularity back in the day.<p>Definitely not for everyone or in every situation though
If you have long nails then two thumbs on a tiny phone keyboard are pretty much impossible.
Maybe for you personally, but in a general sense I don't see how you can hold a phone and "use both hands" to type individual keys.<p>One notable advantage of swiping is that you can be quite loose with each single swipe gesture whereas you have to hit the right key many times for each word. That swipe is also usually much quicker than finding multiple keys for most people.<p>You preferences may reflect youth, eyesight, finger size, co-ordination, phone case usage or other advantages most people don't have.
If only FUTO supported combined keyboard languages without duplicates. Why would there be two separate de and en layouts when multilingual typing is enabled.
FUTO is terrible!<p>I run GOS and have tried it, you spend more time deleting works than actually using it.<p>I was forced to install Google GBoard instead and revoke its network access. Gboard swipe typing works flawlessly, FUTO still an Alpha project.
Seems like this is a new swipe model, though, so it should be more comparable. I also had to switch back to GBoard on GrapheneOS since I was spending more time fixing typos than actually typing with FUTO but I'm willing to give it another shot.
> Gboard swipe typing works flawlessly, FUTO still an Alpha project<p>I agree. I find that swipe typing on Gboard feels much better than FUTO's because I think it adapts to my typing style. I tried FUTO about six months ago, and it was a bit frustrating so I switched back to Gboard. Hopefully, it has improved since then, but I haven't checked.
The early iterations of swipe were very inaccurate, yes. But the newest swipe release mentioned here is much more mature.<p>It's not perfect, but it's practically on par with GBoard aside from a few blips here and there. It's enough for me to get rid of GBoard for good, and not consider reinstalling it.
Can we please get this for iPhone? Their keyboard is extremely imprecise, I have to go back and correct each sentence.
I really want to switch to FUTO keyboard but there are a few UX issues that prevent me. For example, SwiftKey lets you swipe left to delete a word, which is very useful, but FUTO doesnt, you have to start from the Backspace button.<p>Or, SwiftKey will allow you to change a typed word's case by pressing shift, but FUTO just does nothing in that case.<p>I really hope these get fixed, or I can just issue PRs myself for them.
Very nice. FUTO is the keyboard I keep recommending. The only thing missing now would be a decent dual-swipe support. Injecting single letters with taps during a swipe or continuing a swipe with another finger makes it even faster since it let's you avoid awkward long horizontal "detours" just to hit one letter.
At least the web demo doesn't work right if you swipe with multiple fingers at the same time.
I've been using it for a while. The insistence of keyboards on having a large bar of autocorrect suggestions taking valuable vertical space annoys me to no end.<p>I really liked using Fleksy which let you swipe up and down on the keyboard to change autocorrect results, including adding words to your dictionary. I'm still not sure if FUTO even has that option.
seems to be really good
demo seems worse than heliboard
I wrote Hola in spanish and got holocaust
I used the FUTO keyboard for a few months but ditched it as the word suggestions were either odd or random (one example: I'd write 'Jordan' and it would always suggest 'Peterson' as the next word), and I'd got a weirdly passive aggressive prompt saying I should really purchase a license. Went back to the de-Googled Android keyboard in GrapheneOS
Following "Jordan" with "Peterson" doesn't seem random in the slightest
Just tried typing Jordan on mine, and my suggestions were "on", "is", and the Jordanian flag. So I'm pretty sure you had to have typed the words "Jordan Peterson" before for it to make that association.<p>The donation prompt can permanently disabled with two taps, so I'm not sure why that'd be a reason to abandon it. It's a complete non-issue.<p>"You've been using FUTO keyboard for X days. If you find this app useful, please consider paying to support future development.<p>FUTO is dedicated to making good software that doesn't abuse you. This app will never serve ads or collect your personal data."<p>I don't mean to be rude here, but this is an extremely bland, mild message. There's nothing passive aggressive about it in any way. What do you find aggressive about this?
I used to use SwiftKey, but Microsoft acquired and ruined it years ago. It worked really well. Since then the only one that worked for me is Gboard.<p>I've had this installed for a while but found the swiping too inaccurate. I'm trying it again now and I reckon it's as good as Gboard now. I've written this comment using it. Nice!<p>Edit: I've noticed that, like Gboard, it's still hard to type words like "fuck" or even "tits" etc. Are these words just missing from the dictionary? It's always felt like I'm not allowed to type them because I'm not a big boy. I don't type those particular words much, as it happens, but other missing words is annoying.
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If you'd prefer a swipe typing library under a truly open license, NLnet is funding [1] the creation of one by the HeliBoard [2] devs.<p>HeliBoard currently uses a proprietary library extracted from GBoard, which you need to add manually (since the app has no Internet connectivity out of principle), but they're asking for swipe data contributions, to be then distributed under CC-BY-SA 4.0, which'll be then utilized by their own open swipe library.<p>Check our more details here [3], [4] if you'd like to contribute.<p>[1] <a href="https://nlnet.nl/project/GestureTyping/" rel="nofollow">https://nlnet.nl/project/GestureTyping/</a><p>[2] <a href="https://github.com/HeliBorg/HeliBoard" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/HeliBorg/HeliBoard</a><p>[3] <a href="https://github.com/HeliBorg/HeliBoard/wiki/Tutorial:-How-to-Contribute-Gesture-Data" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/HeliBorg/HeliBoard/wiki/Tutorial:-How-to-...</a><p>[4] <a href="https://youtu.be/CyjumVTWtJA" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/CyjumVTWtJA</a>