the inexorable passage of time and end of all things

[kaberett]

For lo these many years (i.e. basically since I got a smartphone) I've been using Swype as an onscreen keyboard. Some time ago it was announced that it had reached end-of-life-and-support, but it wasn't until I went looking earlier today that I realised that happened in 2018, that being when I posted asking for suggestions for replacements.

And then I didn't think about it again for, apparently, approximately eight years, through several new phones and quite a lot of new major versions of Android... and then a few-ish weeks ago Fairphone rolled out Android 15 to the Fairphone 4 and alas That Was The End Of That.

Recommendations back in 2018 were for Gboard and Swiftkey; a question posted to reddit in 2022 garnered similar responses.

Since the Abrupt Keyboard Failure I've swapped to Gboard more or less by default. I don't hate the bit where language switching is now automatic (for the purposes of language learning apps, at any rate), but good grief I am missing the ability to e.g. type < or | without needing to go like three clicks deep in menus. Yes, when I have "Touch and hold keys for symbols" enabled -- as far as I can tell that only gives me one symbol per key, not "now select from a variety of them" as with the much-lamented Swype. I'm also missing the gestures I know for "yes, that word, but change the capitalisation", and still grumpily adjusting to the shift key mode cycle being in a different order to what I'm used to.

I've experimented briefly with AnySoftKey but rapidly got annoyed by the total lack of any Irish language pack (and how difficult it is to navigate the app listings to establish this fact). I'm trying to persuade myself that it's worth giving SwiftKey a try even though it (1) is now Microsoft, (2) has gone all-in on Bundling With Copilot, and (3) apparently "contains ads".

Eheu, alas, etc; all is woe; ... unless anyone knows of any other Android keyboards that provide ready access to All the punctuation...?

Comments

[emperor]

FWIW, I'm using SwiftKey and have not noticed it being ad-filled (I have thus far been able to avoid the AI misfeatures too).

[madgastronomer]

You might look at Unexpected Keyboard, which, if I'm reading you right, does some of what you'd like, and iirc is genuinely free.

[syderia]

I'm using heliboard, gotten through F-Droid
› and ‹ are one long press and a small slide from the main keyboard, | the same
As are most accented letters
You have to type everything, though, as it doesn't have a slide-through-letters to make a word mode, although it seems to be in beta.
Irish is not available in it, although if you can find or make your own dictionary file, you can import it.

[sebenikela]

I've been using SwiftKey since..... 2015? it periodically asks me to turn on its AI :) grammar check :) but I can say no. iirc I paid for it once so that might be why, but I don't get ads.

I'm happy with it but I'm not sure I would switch to it now if I was starting from scratch

[umadoshi]

FWIW, I'm using FUTO Keyboard, which I don't love but found to be the least annoying of the keyboards I tried on my new phone when Swype was no longer really an option. Switching to the punctuation keyboard is one or two taps depending on which characters you need, which may be too annoying.