7 ms·

FUTO Swipe – A new swipe typing model

708 points by futohq 3mo ago

nozzlegear 3mo ago
The swipe demo on the website is neat! I wasn't expecting to be able to use it with my mouse.
satvikpendem 3mo ago
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.
OsrsNeedsf2P 3mo ago
Does anyone know of a FOSS keyboard that supports swiping in Korean? I'm yet to find one
jawns 3mo ago
I'm curious how it compares with Microsoft SwiftKey. Obviously, that's not an open-source app, but it would be an interesting benchmark.
- Mashimo 3mo ago
  I'm also a heavy SwiftKey user, but donated some money to futo last year in hopes they improve the keyboard. SwiftKey got annoying with pushing Ai image Gen and sometimes pop-ups.
- nh2 3mo ago
  I've been using SwiftKey for 10 years (typing not swiping), and test ran FUTO for the last month. 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. I hope it improves further so I can switch. The voice models are great though, and they can be used as part of the keyboard or standalone.
jacooper 3mo ago
If only FUTO supported combined keyboard languages without duplicates. Why would there be two separate de and en layouts when multilingual typing is enabled.
tekacs 3mo ago
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. 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.
- prism56 3mo ago
  I settled on the middle model.
- james2doyle 3mo ago
  Do they still have that issue where it will randomly spit out a string of emojis when using voice to text?
  - tekacs 3mo ago
    Not for me so far!
HiPhish 3mo ago
For anyone wondering: the library uses the GPLv3 (good) while the Android keyboard uses the Futo License (shit). - https://gitlab.futo.org/keyboard/swipe-library/-/blob/master/LICENSE?ref_type=heads https://gitlab.futo.org/keyboard/swipe-library/-/blob/master... - https://github.com/futo-org/android-keyboard/blob/master/LICENSE.md https://github.com/futo-org/android-keyboard/blob/master/LIC...
- cge 3mo ago
  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: https://huggingface.co/futo-org/futo-swipe/blob/main/LICENSE.md https://huggingface.co/futo-org/futo-swipe/blob/main/LICENSE...
- rkagerer 3mo ago
  What's particularly objectionable about the Futo License? Is it this part? you may not remove or obscure any functionality in the software related to payment to the Licensor in any copy you distribute to others.
  - mzajc 3mo ago
    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. 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). [0]: https://gitlab.futo.org/eron/public/-/wikis/Thoughts-on-Open-Source https://gitlab.futo.org/eron/public/-/wikis/Thoughts-on-Open... - please keep in mind that the RMS quote at the top is taken out of context; he is arguing for more freedom, not less
    - 3mo ago
Sebguer 3mo ago
Great timing given I just installed SwiftKey since Microsoft has started embedding ads and dark pattern redirects to Bing!
- speedgoose 3mo ago
  You meant uninstalled, right ? 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.
  - skeledrew 3mo ago
    Has to be. I jumped from SwiftKey the moment I heard Microsoft bought it, back in '14 IIRC.
  - Sebguer 3mo ago
    Hahaha, yes. Though now I'm imagining an incredible alternative world where I only install the most enshittified pieces of software.
- ericol 3mo ago
  Assuming you mean uninstall, yeah I did the same because of that. I wasn getting a constant panel from them regarding using the backup feature, that will just keep re appearing. It was so bad I even moved to GBoard. Not the same, but I'm getting used to.
madspindel 3mo ago
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.
- smlacy 3mo ago
  boycotting?
- exabyte 3mo ago
  true... there are many better reasons to leave iOS than for a keyboard
- zem 3mo ago
  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.
  - eikenberry 3mo ago
    Don't they have to go through a Google approval process for (official) Android? I'm not sure I see this as a big win unless they are strictly supporting GrapheneOS and other de-Googled Androids.
    - zem 3mo ago
      they do, but it's on fdroid too - at that point the play store is simply a nice to have. if google does anything they don't like they can just say okay and keep publishing on fdroid, they have not lost whatever efforts they have invested into android. apple has absolutely no way to just publish an app and let people install it, which at least to my mind delegitimises them as a viable platform. I'm pretty sure if I made open source mobile apps they would be android only, people would be free to take the source and release an ios version under different branding.
      - 3mo ago
oehtXRwMkIs 3mo ago
demo seems worse than heliboard
- prism56 3mo ago
  I've used both extensively and it's a fair bit better, but was significantly worse preupdate
prism56 3mo ago
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. Integrated speak to text, good autocorrect typing, good autocorrect swiping.
spicyusername 3mo ago
Love swipe typing. Nice to see more keyboards in the space.
skeledrew 3mo ago
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.
- Multicomp 3mo ago
  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. 1. super responsive 2. arrow keys!! why this is impossible is beyond me 3. easy access to text editor and undo redo via the long pressing of the enter button 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 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. 6. have I mentioned how performance is great on this app yet? pleasantly surprised. y'all do you but I am keeping this FUTO keyboard.
  - a022311 3mo ago
    I agree, it's by far the best mobile keyboard I've ever tried. I especially love the shortcuts for copy/paste/select all/cut which send the actual Ctrl-C. I can finally use terminals! :-P
amelius 3mo ago
On the one hand snapping to the nearest English word is useful. On the other hand it will prevent our language from evolving.
- sheept 3mo ago
  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.
functionmouse 3mo ago
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. 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.
functionmouse 3mo ago
seems to be really good
jordand 3mo ago
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
- drewstiff 3mo ago
  Following "Jordan" with "Peterson" doesn't seem random in the slightest
  - jordand 3mo ago
    It never had my own surname as a suggestion, and there's many people, places and things called 'Jordan' in some way
    - OsrsNeedsf2P 3mo ago
      So you want it to randomly pick the next word, rather than suggest the most common word?
      - jordand 3mo ago
        The most common word I entered after my forename is my surname. All other keyboards handled this fine, but FUTO didn't. That's what's odd
        stavros 3mo ago
        I think that, for it to learn a word, you need to actually press the middle suggestion, not just space. I'm not sure, though. Couldn't you add your surname as a custom word?
- copper-float 3mo ago
  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. 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. "You've been using FUTO keyboard for X days. If you find this app useful, please consider paying to support future development. FUTO is dedicated to making good software that doesn't abuse you. This app will never serve ads or collect your personal data." 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?
blopker 3mo ago
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. 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. It's not as good as gboard yet, but close enough that I'm going to stick with it. 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. The only fundamental issue I have with it, they seem to be ideologically opposed to adding a GIF search, which I miss occasionally. https://github.com/futo-org/android-keyboard/issues/293#issuecomment-3024858791 https://github.com/futo-org/android-keyboard/issues/293#issu...
- james2doyle 3mo ago
  We sound similar. I have found that the voice to text can often just randomly start spitting out emojis. Did you find that?
  - rpdillon 3mo ago
    Which voice model are you using? I found that the english-74 is quite excellent. Used it to type this. Haven't seen the emoji issue with that model. Perhaps you're on english-39? https://keyboard.futo.org/voice-input-models https://keyboard.futo.org/voice-input-models
- globular-toast 3mo ago
  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.
  - throawayonthe 3mo ago
    worse, there's silly keys you can accidentally click and type out flibbertigibbet. very childish
  - 3mo ago
popcar2 3mo ago
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. 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. Edit: It is sending me a little that it keeps swiping "whats" instead of "what's" though, hopefully they fix that later.
- backscratches 3mo ago
  Heliboard has had great swipe for a while and has two finger swipe which is killer feature
  - catelm 3mo ago
    Mind blown. And brain broken as I try to swipe with two fingers
    - backscratches 3mo ago
      I'm sorry, once you've tried it you may not be able to go back. For close to a decade have been using an unmaintained app called nintype that was apparently the inventor of two finger swipe until it stopped working on new android versions... Heliboard saved me from actual despair
  - pmontra 3mo ago
    I'll look for a video. I like swyping because I can hold the phone in one hand and swipe with the thumb. The other hand is free. Two finger swiping would negate that advantage but maybe it opens up other usage scenarios.
    - backscratches 3mo ago
      Its optional! One finger swipe on heliboard works at least as well as gboard or this futo one.
Vingdoloras 3mo ago
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.
- PlotCitizen 3mo ago
  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
  - backscratches 3mo ago
    Heliboard on f-droid does two thumb swiping!
- mightyham 3mo ago
  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.
  - backscratches 3mo ago
    I used nintype and keyboard69 for years, heliboard on f-droid supports two thumb swiping and works very well ! Not as good as nintype but extremely useful
  - lproven 3mo ago
    Never heard of that one before, so I looked it up & watched a demo vid. Aieeee! I don't think I could ever learn to use that. I am from the 1990s fast-T9 entry era, and my thumb dexterity is poor. (And I'm left-handed with a badly-damaged right hand.) I think this is a text entry method solely or primarily for the 2-thumb console-gamepad generation. (I find gamepads really hard to use, too. Give me a joystick, or mouse+WASD.)
ibejoeb 3mo ago
I've been using the new swipe for a few days and it's truly excellent.
sheept 3mo ago
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
julianlam 3mo ago
As a FUTO keyboard user for about a year I'm quite excited for this! Their local voice transcription is top notch and proper swipe gestures would be icing on the cake. Now to fix that issue there tapping "Tuesd" sometimes suggests "Thursday"
BosunoB 3mo ago
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? Still going strong with Fleksy even though you can't even download it anymore.
- xp84 3mo ago
  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.
- nutjob2 3mo ago
  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. 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. You preferences may reflect youth, eyesight, finger size, co-ordination, phone case usage or other advantages most people don't have.
  - BosunoB 3mo ago
    I think it more likely reflects using bigger phones, where swiping across a while keyboard is quite slow, but also, I hate typing with two hands with any other app than Fleksy. You just have to hit within the general area of the key and it counts. I haven't had that kind of success with any other keyboard I've tried.
- egypturnash 3mo ago
  If you have long nails then two thumbs on a tiny phone keyboard are pretty much impossible.
- ktrnka 3mo ago
  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. 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. Definitely not for everyone or in every situation though
ktimespi 3mo ago
If this can learn my patterns, that itself is enough. Google Keyboard used to do this, but mysteriously doesn't do it anymore.
gblargg 3mo ago
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).
- projektfu 3mo ago
  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.
- johanyc 3mo ago
  gboard has voice dictation and it has real-time update
  - gblargg 3mo ago
    Yep, and it's pretty bad. The only benefit is real-time, which is why I highlighted that FUTO lacks that. If it made as many errors as GBoard, it wouldn't be worth using.
    - johanyc 3mo ago
      No it's pretty good. Pretty much always accurate. Was that years ago? Or are you talking about languages with less resources?
- killerstorm 3mo ago
  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.)
nmstoker 3mo ago
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)
jeena 3mo ago
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. 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 https://github.com/HeliBorg/HeliBoard https://github.com/HeliBorg/HeliBoard for ever, but it does not have sviping. I might try FUTO Swipe just to test it.
- flexagoon 3mo ago
  Heliboard does have swiping! You just have to manually download the GBoard swiping library and upload it in the app.
- backscratches 3mo ago
  Not only does heliboard have swiping, it has two finger swipe, which is more than 2x better than one finger swipe!
kayson 3mo ago
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. 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.
stavros 3mo ago
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. Or, SwiftKey will allow you to change a typed word's case by pressing shift, but FUTO just does nothing in that case. I really hope these get fixed, or I can just issue PRs myself for them.
vzaliva 3mo ago
what languages it support? They only mention "language-agnostic".
crazygringo 3mo ago
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. 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. 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". 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%.
- jaggederest 3mo ago
  Blast from the past here for you, probably not relevant any more, but a cool reimagining of gesture interfaces: https://www.the8pen.com/ https://www.the8pen.com/ Edit: apparently there's a modern successor? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=inc.flide.vi8 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=inc.flide.vi8
  - horsawlarway 3mo ago
    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). 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. Nothing has come close to the same expressiveness and speed while being usable completely blind, only by feel. I do feel like mobile keyboards have stagnated in a bad spot, though.
    - JdeBP 3mo ago
      I should have guessed. Of course someone has done this. (-: * https://github.com/sspanak/tt9 https://github.com/sspanak/tt9
OJFord 3mo ago
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.
- Cider9986 3mo ago
  Try the keyboard or the training. It's better than GBoard in some ways.
willconnelly 3mo ago
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.
h4kunamata 3mo ago
FUTO is terrible! I run GOS and have tried it, you spend more time deleting works than actually using it. I was forced to install Google GBoard instead and revoke its network access. Gboard swipe typing works flawlessly, FUTO still an Alpha project.
- TranquilMarmot 3mo ago
  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.
- copper-float 3mo ago
  The early iterations of swipe were very inaccurate, yes. But the newest swipe release mentioned here is much more mature. 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.
- KomoD 3mo ago
  > Gboard swipe typing works flawlessly, FUTO still an Alpha project 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.
  - gertop 3mo ago
    > Hopefully, it has improved since then, but I haven't checked. Good news then because you're currently in a thread about how FUTO has improved!
    - KomoD 3mo ago
      Just because they say so doesn't necessarily make it true, which is why I included the "hopefully" and "haven't checked".
wolvoleo 3mo ago
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.
- seb1204 3mo ago
  I'm sure they will, version 3. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
  - wolvoleo 3mo ago
    Well neither is perfect. But I really need that multilingual typing. Constantly switching is so annoying. I won't use the FUTO one until it can do that. It's not some minor nice-to-have. Gboard has obvious imperfections like data mining. Though on my phone I can just block its network access altogether which mitigates it a lot.
windyan 3mo ago
[dead]
Humphrey 3mo ago
Would love an iOS version! The keyboard landscape on iOS is grim, and gboard hasn't received updates in years.
Groxx 3mo ago
Finally! Usable! Between this and the excellent dictation, it's finally looking good enough that I can probably recommend it to anyone.
t_gamer_kle 3mo ago
Oh frabjous day! I've waited YEARS for something like this. THANK YOU FUTO!
sholladay 3mo ago
This keyboard seems to ship with a dictionary that includes a lot of curse words. No more ducking around.
- ta8903 3mo ago
  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.
- a022311 3mo ago
  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.
  - Aachen 3mo ago
    I read it as a positive comment, as in that it types what you wrote
RandyOrion 3mo ago
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. 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.
kstenerud 3mo ago
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.
- dhruvbird 3mo ago
  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.
- defenestrated 3mo ago
  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
  - ComodoHacker 3mo ago
    What is "code switching"?
    - deruta 3mo ago
      When you're multilingual, you'd switch between languages on the fly, mid-sentence even, just because the words in other language come to your mind quicker, seem to better match nuances, etc.
    - johanyc 3mo ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching
- projektfu 3mo ago
  Yes, this is a showstopper for me. Preciso escrever in several languages.
tmach32 3mo ago
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).
- eviks 3mo ago
  Occasional bug is worse than permanent suffering?
  - tmach32 3mo ago
    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 giant improvement over the stock keyboard these days. They used to be. Wrt the “occasional bug”, what happens is that sometimes (enough to make it bad) the keyboard doesn’t render at all!
    - eviks 3mo ago
      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. But in general, there is no giant improvement, 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 To me, not being able to type in numbers easily is a permanent suffering, though ok, not the end of the world And unfortunately don't think there is a single swipe keyboard that's properly customizable to fix those glaring issues...
- Squarex 3mo ago
  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.
  - tmach32 3mo ago
fowlie 3mo ago
Awesome project!! I will migrate off from gboard when support for Norwegian gets better.
utopiah 3mo ago
Ah nice they do have a VR demo https://swipe.futo.tech/vr-swipe-small.mp4 https://swipe.futo.tech/vr-swipe-small.mp4 ... now I'm wondering if there is a WASM version so that it can be used in WebXR.
- utopiah 3mo ago
  Apparently ExecuTorch has a WASM backend, could work to load the model this way.
  - utopiah 3mo ago
    Docs https://github.com/pytorch/executorch/tree/main/examples/wasm https://github.com/pytorch/executorch/tree/main/examples/was...
wxw 3mo ago
Apple’s swipe to text is so good that I forget there’s still work to be done in the space. Great stuff FUTO.
smusamashah 3mo ago
Looking at the example videos, specially the VR one, I can't help but think that this gives every word its own unique shape. For example, the word "model" got shape matching infinity symbol.
farhanhubble 3mo ago
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
globular-toast 3mo ago
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. 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! 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.
dhruvbird 3mo ago
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 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/grammarly-ai-keyboard-notes/id1158877342 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/grammarly-ai-keyboard-notes/id... and use the qwerty english keyboard layout to get this neural net version of swipe. See https://www.grammarly.com/blog/engineering/deep-learning-swipe-typing/ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/engineering/deep-learning-swi... for more details - it's very similar to the architecture described by the FUTO folks. 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: 1. (food, good, hood) 2. (you, toy, rot) 3. (our, or, it) etc... (Disclaimer: I am one of the authors of the Grammarly swipe system as described in the linked blog post).
- serpix 3mo ago
  Tried Grammarly, could you possibly include a few more onboarding animations and reminders to upgrade to the paid version? I almost finished typing a word.
teiferer 3mo ago
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.
- xdkaplan 3mo ago
  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. e.g., 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)
- connicpu 3mo ago
  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.
charcircuit 3mo ago
At least the web demo doesn't work right if you swipe with multiple fingers at the same time.
GL26 3mo ago
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 : https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/26/creation-of-the-first-iphone-touchscreen-interview-with-scott-forstall-tony-fadell-and-greg-christie.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/26/creation-of-the-first-iphone...
- InsideOutSanta 3mo ago
  >the touchscreen hadn't the resolution to tell appart which letter you meant to type in Is that really true? My memory of the original iPhone's touch screen is that it was pretty much pixel-accurate. The article mentions that the keyboard wasn't accurate enough: "But by early 2006, the iPhone keyboard still didn’t have the accuracy Apple needed to ship the phone." 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.
  - vlovich123 3mo ago
    I think OP is misremembering about the reason for the hit boxes. The base reason is the size of the keyboard compared with the size of thumbs and the imprecision of thumb typing. Adjusting the hit boxes results in a better error rate. It isn’t because of the resolution of the screen or touch detection.
- a022311 3mo ago
  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.
- superxpro12 3mo ago
  im fairly sure gboard does the same thing. it will bias towards certain subsequent keys based on the current input. im sure there's a whole bunch of tricks keyboard apps use to make typing "feel" accurate.
eviks 3mo ago
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!
selfawareMammal 3mo ago
I wrote Hola in spanish and got holocaust
red_admiral 3mo ago
> Your keyboard shouldn't connect to the internet. Amen. Glad to see that companies like that still exist.
atoav 3mo ago
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.
- backscratches 3mo ago
  Have you used heliboard's two finger swiping? Can't live without two finger swipe
vulkoingim 3mo ago
That's neat! Would love to try it, but am also on iOS :/ 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. 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.
- puttycat 3mo ago
  What do you mean? iOS has a native swift option.
  - cloogshicer 3mo ago
    Native iOS is significantly worse than SwiftKey and doesn't support multiple languages without having to switch the keyboard constantly. In SwiftKey you can mix languages. I'd also be very interested in SwiftKey alternatives, since MS already almost killed it once.
    - puttycat 3mo ago
      I have two languages defined in iOS (English and French) and the native swift keyboard recognizes which language I'm swifting in.
  - vulkoingim 3mo ago
    Pretty much what `cloogshicer` said. I am interested in something that has support for multiple languages + swipe support.
    - puttycat 3mo ago
      iOS has that.
TechniKris 3mo ago
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. 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. Check our more details here [3], [4] if you'd like to contribute. [1] https://nlnet.nl/project/GestureTyping/ https://nlnet.nl/project/GestureTyping/ [2] https://github.com/HeliBorg/HeliBoard https://github.com/HeliBorg/HeliBoard [3] https://github.com/HeliBorg/HeliBoard/wiki/Tutorial:-How-to-Contribute-Gesture-Data https://github.com/HeliBorg/HeliBoard/wiki/Tutorial:-How-to-... [4] https://youtu.be/CyjumVTWtJA https://youtu.be/CyjumVTWtJA
- backscratches 3mo ago
  I have contributed to this. Heliboard also great because it supports two finger swipe which is huge ergonomic improvement
backscratches 3mo ago
Can it do two finger swipe like Heliboard? Must have feature for modern swipe keyboard
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
arnorhs 3mo ago
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. 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.
- reddalo 3mo ago
  > because of the way the language works What's the problem of Icelandic? Is it because you stick words together like in Danish or German?
- jonasced 3mo ago
  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.
Jnr 3mo ago
Can we please get this for iPhone? Their keyboard is extremely imprecise, I have to go back and correct each sentence.
artisin 3mo ago
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.
tgtweak 3mo ago
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...)
- arusahni 3mo ago
  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. Unfortunately some of those Swype nicities are patented [1], so other keyboards can't use them. [1]: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7098896B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US7098896B2/en
  - tgtweak 3mo ago
    I feel like a clean room opensource keyboard could implement those without any patent liabilities. Software patents are notoriously difficult to enforce and I don't think nuance is spending any money enforcing this given they stopped swype in 2018.
    - arusahni 3mo ago
      They're now owned by infamously-litigious Microsoft.
- lproven 3mo ago
  > swype was so good before it got destroyed by Nuance. 100% this. THE best text-entry method for touchscreens. Nuance enshittified it and then Microsoft killed it. https://www.theregister.com/on-prem/2022/06/06/microsofts-swype-still-the-best-software-keyboard-there-is/328522 https://www.theregister.com/on-prem/2022/06/06/microsofts-sw...
ErikGulliksen 3mo ago
I started using the main FUTO keyboard after seeing it mentioned here the other week. Then a few days later I tried to open my HSBC banking app and it refused to open because it detected FUTO keyboard which it treated as an insecure application, so had to remove FUTO after a couple of days of use.
amelius 3mo ago
Combine this with AI, and you only have to ramble a bit on your keyboard to get the collected works of Shakespeare.
3RTB297 3mo ago
Thanks for making this privacy-forward. I had been using Heliboard and then a kludge to get another language they don't support via Simple keyboard. It worked well as a workaround, and then an update last week broke my workaround. Futo just has all the languages I need, and does a better job with EN swipe than Heliboard. 100% convert. Plus, learning about Clearflow is a game changer.
krunck 3mo ago
This is great! As someone with one thumb that can't bend at either joint and another that doesn't bend well I've been a single finger typer on my phone. Thanks to all involved for this privacy respecting swipe keyboard!
yareally 3mo ago
Swiping feels a bit more accurate than Gboard overall. I'm not seeing a way to add a word to the dictionary. Am I missing something?
PennRobotics 3mo ago
Gboard has been messing with the emoji search recently. It is worse. Previously, if you type "fac" or "face" or "facep" or "facepa" or "palm" in the search box, you'd get the facepalm emoji among the results. Inexplicably, now the lying emoji, bacon, fondue are shown when you type "fac" but not the classic facepalm. It is only after you type "facepal" that the facepalm emoji appears in the results, which is a major... facepalm for the Gboard team. As a parent, I need to _constantly_ send the facepalm emoji to my partner, so I noticed immediately when it recently changed. I think they're now trying to account for multiple languages, misspellings, a larger list of synonyms that allows partial matches, sentiment/meaning/synonyms, etc. In any case, I've always felt like emojis should be weighted by overall usage patterns (I have never used the fondue emoji and don't know anyone who does) and now they need a better search trie, where the facepalm emoji is in the top results of "fac".

708 points by futohq 3mo ago

The swipe demo on the website is neat! I wasn't expecting to be able to use it with my mouse.

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.

OsrsNeedsf2P 3mo ago

Does anyone know of a FOSS keyboard that supports swiping in Korean? I'm yet to find one

jawns 3mo ago

I'm curious how it compares with Microsoft SwiftKey. Obviously, that's not an open-source app, but it would be an interesting benchmark.

Mashimo 3mo ago
I'm also a heavy SwiftKey user, but donated some money to futo last year in hopes they improve the keyboard. SwiftKey got annoying with pushing Ai image Gen and sometimes pop-ups.
nh2 3mo ago
I've been using SwiftKey for 10 years (typing not swiping), and test ran FUTO for the last month. 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. I hope it improves further so I can switch. The voice models are great though, and they can be used as part of the keyboard or standalone.

jacooper 3mo ago

If only FUTO supported combined keyboard languages without duplicates. Why would there be two separate de and en layouts when multilingual typing is enabled.

tekacs 3mo ago

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. 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.

prism56 3mo ago
I settled on the middle model.
james2doyle 3mo ago
Do they still have that issue where it will randomly spit out a string of emojis when using voice to text?
- tekacs 3mo ago
  Not for me so far!

HiPhish 3mo ago

For anyone wondering: the library uses the GPLv3 (good) while the Android keyboard uses the Futo License (shit). - https://gitlab.futo.org/keyboard/swipe-library/-/blob/master/LICENSE?ref_type=heads https://gitlab.futo.org/keyboard/swipe-library/-/blob/master... - https://github.com/futo-org/android-keyboard/blob/master/LICENSE.md https://github.com/futo-org/android-keyboard/blob/master/LIC...

cge 3mo ago
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: https://huggingface.co/futo-org/futo-swipe/blob/main/LICENSE.md https://huggingface.co/futo-org/futo-swipe/blob/main/LICENSE...
rkagerer 3mo ago
What's particularly objectionable about the Futo License? Is it this part? you may not remove or obscure any functionality in the software related to payment to the Licensor in any copy you distribute to others.
- mzajc 3mo ago
  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. 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). [0]: https://gitlab.futo.org/eron/public/-/wikis/Thoughts-on-Open-Source https://gitlab.futo.org/eron/public/-/wikis/Thoughts-on-Open... - please keep in mind that the RMS quote at the top is taken out of context; he is arguing for more freedom, not less
  - 3mo ago

Sebguer 3mo ago

Great timing given I just installed SwiftKey since Microsoft has started embedding ads and dark pattern redirects to Bing!

speedgoose 3mo ago
You meant uninstalled, right ? 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.
- skeledrew 3mo ago
  Has to be. I jumped from SwiftKey the moment I heard Microsoft bought it, back in '14 IIRC.
- Sebguer 3mo ago
  Hahaha, yes. Though now I'm imagining an incredible alternative world where I only install the most enshittified pieces of software.
ericol 3mo ago
Assuming you mean uninstall, yeah I did the same because of that. I wasn getting a constant panel from them regarding using the backup feature, that will just keep re appearing. It was so bad I even moved to GBoard. Not the same, but I'm getting used to.

madspindel 3mo ago

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.

smlacy 3mo ago
boycotting?
exabyte 3mo ago
true... there are many better reasons to leave iOS than for a keyboard
zem 3mo ago
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.
- eikenberry 3mo ago
  Don't they have to go through a Google approval process for (official) Android? I'm not sure I see this as a big win unless they are strictly supporting GrapheneOS and other de-Googled Androids.
  - zem 3mo ago
    they do, but it's on fdroid too - at that point the play store is simply a nice to have. if google does anything they don't like they can just say okay and keep publishing on fdroid, they have not lost whatever efforts they have invested into android. apple has absolutely no way to just publish an app and let people install it, which at least to my mind delegitimises them as a viable platform. I'm pretty sure if I made open source mobile apps they would be android only, people would be free to take the source and release an ios version under different branding.
    - 3mo ago

oehtXRwMkIs 3mo ago

demo seems worse than heliboard

prism56 3mo ago
I've used both extensively and it's a fair bit better, but was significantly worse preupdate

prism56 3mo ago

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. Integrated speak to text, good autocorrect typing, good autocorrect swiping.

spicyusername 3mo ago

Love swipe typing. Nice to see more keyboards in the space.

skeledrew 3mo ago

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.

Multicomp 3mo ago
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. 1. super responsive 2. arrow keys!! why this is impossible is beyond me 3. easy access to text editor and undo redo via the long pressing of the enter button 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 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. 6. have I mentioned how performance is great on this app yet? pleasantly surprised. y'all do you but I am keeping this FUTO keyboard.
- a022311 3mo ago
  I agree, it's by far the best mobile keyboard I've ever tried. I especially love the shortcuts for copy/paste/select all/cut which send the actual Ctrl-C. I can finally use terminals! :-P

amelius 3mo ago

On the one hand snapping to the nearest English word is useful. On the other hand it will prevent our language from evolving.

sheept 3mo ago
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.

functionmouse 3mo ago

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. 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.

functionmouse 3mo ago

seems to be really good

jordand 3mo ago

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

drewstiff 3mo ago
Following "Jordan" with "Peterson" doesn't seem random in the slightest
- jordand 3mo ago
  It never had my own surname as a suggestion, and there's many people, places and things called 'Jordan' in some way
  - OsrsNeedsf2P 3mo ago
    So you want it to randomly pick the next word, rather than suggest the most common word?
    - jordand 3mo ago
      The most common word I entered after my forename is my surname. All other keyboards handled this fine, but FUTO didn't. That's what's odd
      - stavros 3mo ago
        I think that, for it to learn a word, you need to actually press the middle suggestion, not just space. I'm not sure, though. Couldn't you add your surname as a custom word?
copper-float 3mo ago
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. 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. "You've been using FUTO keyboard for X days. If you find this app useful, please consider paying to support future development. FUTO is dedicated to making good software that doesn't abuse you. This app will never serve ads or collect your personal data." 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?

blopker 3mo ago

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. 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. It's not as good as gboard yet, but close enough that I'm going to stick with it. 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. The only fundamental issue I have with it, they seem to be ideologically opposed to adding a GIF search, which I miss occasionally. https://github.com/futo-org/android-keyboard/issues/293#issuecomment-3024858791 https://github.com/futo-org/android-keyboard/issues/293#issu...

james2doyle 3mo ago
We sound similar. I have found that the voice to text can often just randomly start spitting out emojis. Did you find that?
- rpdillon 3mo ago
  Which voice model are you using? I found that the english-74 is quite excellent. Used it to type this. Haven't seen the emoji issue with that model. Perhaps you're on english-39? https://keyboard.futo.org/voice-input-models https://keyboard.futo.org/voice-input-models
globular-toast 3mo ago
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.
- throawayonthe 3mo ago
  worse, there's silly keys you can accidentally click and type out flibbertigibbet. very childish
- 3mo ago

popcar2 3mo ago

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. 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. Edit: It is sending me a little that it keeps swiping "whats" instead of "what's" though, hopefully they fix that later.

backscratches 3mo ago
Heliboard has had great swipe for a while and has two finger swipe which is killer feature
- catelm 3mo ago
  Mind blown. And brain broken as I try to swipe with two fingers
  - backscratches 3mo ago
    I'm sorry, once you've tried it you may not be able to go back. For close to a decade have been using an unmaintained app called nintype that was apparently the inventor of two finger swipe until it stopped working on new android versions... Heliboard saved me from actual despair
- pmontra 3mo ago
  I'll look for a video. I like swyping because I can hold the phone in one hand and swipe with the thumb. The other hand is free. Two finger swiping would negate that advantage but maybe it opens up other usage scenarios.
  - backscratches 3mo ago
    Its optional! One finger swipe on heliboard works at least as well as gboard or this futo one.

Vingdoloras 3mo ago

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.

PlotCitizen 3mo ago
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
- backscratches 3mo ago
  Heliboard on f-droid does two thumb swiping!
mightyham 3mo ago
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.
- backscratches 3mo ago
  I used nintype and keyboard69 for years, heliboard on f-droid supports two thumb swiping and works very well ! Not as good as nintype but extremely useful
- lproven 3mo ago
  Never heard of that one before, so I looked it up & watched a demo vid. Aieeee! I don't think I could ever learn to use that. I am from the 1990s fast-T9 entry era, and my thumb dexterity is poor. (And I'm left-handed with a badly-damaged right hand.) I think this is a text entry method solely or primarily for the 2-thumb console-gamepad generation. (I find gamepads really hard to use, too. Give me a joystick, or mouse+WASD.)

ibejoeb 3mo ago

I've been using the new swipe for a few days and it's truly excellent.

sheept 3mo ago

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

julianlam 3mo ago

As a FUTO keyboard user for about a year I'm quite excited for this! Their local voice transcription is top notch and proper swipe gestures would be icing on the cake. Now to fix that issue there tapping "Tuesd" sometimes suggests "Thursday"

BosunoB 3mo ago

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? Still going strong with Fleksy even though you can't even download it anymore.

xp84 3mo ago
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.
nutjob2 3mo ago
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. 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. You preferences may reflect youth, eyesight, finger size, co-ordination, phone case usage or other advantages most people don't have.
- BosunoB 3mo ago
  I think it more likely reflects using bigger phones, where swiping across a while keyboard is quite slow, but also, I hate typing with two hands with any other app than Fleksy. You just have to hit within the general area of the key and it counts. I haven't had that kind of success with any other keyboard I've tried.
egypturnash 3mo ago
If you have long nails then two thumbs on a tiny phone keyboard are pretty much impossible.
ktrnka 3mo ago
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. 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. Definitely not for everyone or in every situation though

ktimespi 3mo ago

If this can learn my patterns, that itself is enough. Google Keyboard used to do this, but mysteriously doesn't do it anymore.

gblargg 3mo ago

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).

projektfu 3mo ago
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.
johanyc 3mo ago
gboard has voice dictation and it has real-time update
- gblargg 3mo ago
  Yep, and it's pretty bad. The only benefit is real-time, which is why I highlighted that FUTO lacks that. If it made as many errors as GBoard, it wouldn't be worth using.
  - johanyc 3mo ago
    No it's pretty good. Pretty much always accurate. Was that years ago? Or are you talking about languages with less resources?
killerstorm 3mo ago
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.)

nmstoker 3mo ago

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)

jeena 3mo ago

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. 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 https://github.com/HeliBorg/HeliBoard https://github.com/HeliBorg/HeliBoard for ever, but it does not have sviping. I might try FUTO Swipe just to test it.

flexagoon 3mo ago
Heliboard does have swiping! You just have to manually download the GBoard swiping library and upload it in the app.
backscratches 3mo ago
Not only does heliboard have swiping, it has two finger swipe, which is more than 2x better than one finger swipe!

kayson 3mo ago

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. 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.

stavros 3mo ago

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. Or, SwiftKey will allow you to change a typed word's case by pressing shift, but FUTO just does nothing in that case. I really hope these get fixed, or I can just issue PRs myself for them.

vzaliva 3mo ago

what languages it support? They only mention "language-agnostic".

crazygringo 3mo ago

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. 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. 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". 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%.

jaggederest 3mo ago
Blast from the past here for you, probably not relevant any more, but a cool reimagining of gesture interfaces: https://www.the8pen.com/ https://www.the8pen.com/ Edit: apparently there's a modern successor? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=inc.flide.vi8 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=inc.flide.vi8
- horsawlarway 3mo ago
  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). 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. Nothing has come close to the same expressiveness and speed while being usable completely blind, only by feel. I do feel like mobile keyboards have stagnated in a bad spot, though.
  - JdeBP 3mo ago
    I should have guessed. Of course someone has done this. (-: * https://github.com/sspanak/tt9 https://github.com/sspanak/tt9

OJFord 3mo ago

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.

Cider9986 3mo ago
Try the keyboard or the training. It's better than GBoard in some ways.

willconnelly 3mo ago

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.

h4kunamata 3mo ago

FUTO is terrible! I run GOS and have tried it, you spend more time deleting works than actually using it. I was forced to install Google GBoard instead and revoke its network access. Gboard swipe typing works flawlessly, FUTO still an Alpha project.

TranquilMarmot 3mo ago
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.
copper-float 3mo ago
The early iterations of swipe were very inaccurate, yes. But the newest swipe release mentioned here is much more mature. 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.
KomoD 3mo ago
> Gboard swipe typing works flawlessly, FUTO still an Alpha project 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.
- gertop 3mo ago
  > Hopefully, it has improved since then, but I haven't checked. Good news then because you're currently in a thread about how FUTO has improved!
  - KomoD 3mo ago
    Just because they say so doesn't necessarily make it true, which is why I included the "hopefully" and "haven't checked".

wolvoleo 3mo ago

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.

seb1204 3mo ago
I'm sure they will, version 3. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
- wolvoleo 3mo ago
  Well neither is perfect. But I really need that multilingual typing. Constantly switching is so annoying. I won't use the FUTO one until it can do that. It's not some minor nice-to-have. Gboard has obvious imperfections like data mining. Though on my phone I can just block its network access altogether which mitigates it a lot.

windyan 3mo ago

[dead]

Humphrey 3mo ago

Would love an iOS version! The keyboard landscape on iOS is grim, and gboard hasn't received updates in years.

Groxx 3mo ago

Finally! Usable! Between this and the excellent dictation, it's finally looking good enough that I can probably recommend it to anyone.

t_gamer_kle 3mo ago

Oh frabjous day! I've waited YEARS for something like this. THANK YOU FUTO!

sholladay 3mo ago

This keyboard seems to ship with a dictionary that includes a lot of curse words. No more ducking around.

ta8903 3mo ago
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.
a022311 3mo ago
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.
- Aachen 3mo ago
  I read it as a positive comment, as in that it types what you wrote

RandyOrion 3mo ago

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. 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.

kstenerud 3mo ago

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.

dhruvbird 3mo ago
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.
defenestrated 3mo ago
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
- ComodoHacker 3mo ago
  What is "code switching"?
  - deruta 3mo ago
    When you're multilingual, you'd switch between languages on the fly, mid-sentence even, just because the words in other language come to your mind quicker, seem to better match nuances, etc.
  - johanyc 3mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching
projektfu 3mo ago
Yes, this is a showstopper for me. Preciso escrever in several languages.

tmach32 3mo ago

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).

eviks 3mo ago
Occasional bug is worse than permanent suffering?
- tmach32 3mo ago
  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 giant improvement over the stock keyboard these days. They used to be. Wrt the “occasional bug”, what happens is that sometimes (enough to make it bad) the keyboard doesn’t render at all!
  - eviks 3mo ago
    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. But in general, there is no giant improvement, 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 To me, not being able to type in numbers easily is a permanent suffering, though ok, not the end of the world And unfortunately don't think there is a single swipe keyboard that's properly customizable to fix those glaring issues...
Squarex 3mo ago
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.
- tmach32 3mo ago

fowlie 3mo ago

Awesome project!! I will migrate off from gboard when support for Norwegian gets better.

utopiah 3mo ago

Ah nice they do have a VR demo https://swipe.futo.tech/vr-swipe-small.mp4 https://swipe.futo.tech/vr-swipe-small.mp4 ... now I'm wondering if there is a WASM version so that it can be used in WebXR.

utopiah 3mo ago
Apparently ExecuTorch has a WASM backend, could work to load the model this way.
- utopiah 3mo ago
  Docs https://github.com/pytorch/executorch/tree/main/examples/wasm https://github.com/pytorch/executorch/tree/main/examples/was...

wxw 3mo ago

Apple’s swipe to text is so good that I forget there’s still work to be done in the space. Great stuff FUTO.

smusamashah 3mo ago

Looking at the example videos, specially the VR one, I can't help but think that this gives every word its own unique shape. For example, the word "model" got shape matching infinity symbol.

farhanhubble 3mo ago

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

globular-toast 3mo ago

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. 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! 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.

dhruvbird 3mo ago

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 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/grammarly-ai-keyboard-notes/id1158877342 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/grammarly-ai-keyboard-notes/id... and use the qwerty english keyboard layout to get this neural net version of swipe. See https://www.grammarly.com/blog/engineering/deep-learning-swipe-typing/ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/engineering/deep-learning-swi... for more details - it's very similar to the architecture described by the FUTO folks. 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: 1. (food, good, hood) 2. (you, toy, rot) 3. (our, or, it) etc... (Disclaimer: I am one of the authors of the Grammarly swipe system as described in the linked blog post).

serpix 3mo ago
Tried Grammarly, could you possibly include a few more onboarding animations and reminders to upgrade to the paid version? I almost finished typing a word.

teiferer 3mo ago

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.

xdkaplan 3mo ago
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. e.g., 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)
connicpu 3mo ago
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.

charcircuit 3mo ago

At least the web demo doesn't work right if you swipe with multiple fingers at the same time.

GL26 3mo ago

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 : https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/26/creation-of-the-first-iphone-touchscreen-interview-with-scott-forstall-tony-fadell-and-greg-christie.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/26/creation-of-the-first-iphone...

InsideOutSanta 3mo ago
>the touchscreen hadn't the resolution to tell appart which letter you meant to type in Is that really true? My memory of the original iPhone's touch screen is that it was pretty much pixel-accurate. The article mentions that the keyboard wasn't accurate enough: "But by early 2006, the iPhone keyboard still didn’t have the accuracy Apple needed to ship the phone." 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.
- vlovich123 3mo ago
  I think OP is misremembering about the reason for the hit boxes. The base reason is the size of the keyboard compared with the size of thumbs and the imprecision of thumb typing. Adjusting the hit boxes results in a better error rate. It isn’t because of the resolution of the screen or touch detection.
a022311 3mo ago
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.
superxpro12 3mo ago
im fairly sure gboard does the same thing. it will bias towards certain subsequent keys based on the current input. im sure there's a whole bunch of tricks keyboard apps use to make typing "feel" accurate.

eviks 3mo ago

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!

selfawareMammal 3mo ago

I wrote Hola in spanish and got holocaust

red_admiral 3mo ago

> Your keyboard shouldn't connect to the internet. Amen. Glad to see that companies like that still exist.

atoav 3mo ago

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.

backscratches 3mo ago
Have you used heliboard's two finger swiping? Can't live without two finger swipe

vulkoingim 3mo ago

That's neat! Would love to try it, but am also on iOS :/ 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. 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.

puttycat 3mo ago
What do you mean? iOS has a native swift option.
- cloogshicer 3mo ago
  Native iOS is significantly worse than SwiftKey and doesn't support multiple languages without having to switch the keyboard constantly. In SwiftKey you can mix languages. I'd also be very interested in SwiftKey alternatives, since MS already almost killed it once.
  - puttycat 3mo ago
    I have two languages defined in iOS (English and French) and the native swift keyboard recognizes which language I'm swifting in.
- vulkoingim 3mo ago
  Pretty much what `cloogshicer` said. I am interested in something that has support for multiple languages + swipe support.
  - puttycat 3mo ago
    iOS has that.

TechniKris 3mo ago

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. 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. Check our more details here [3], [4] if you'd like to contribute. [1] https://nlnet.nl/project/GestureTyping/ https://nlnet.nl/project/GestureTyping/ [2] https://github.com/HeliBorg/HeliBoard https://github.com/HeliBorg/HeliBoard [3] https://github.com/HeliBorg/HeliBoard/wiki/Tutorial:-How-to-Contribute-Gesture-Data https://github.com/HeliBorg/HeliBoard/wiki/Tutorial:-How-to-... [4] https://youtu.be/CyjumVTWtJA https://youtu.be/CyjumVTWtJA

backscratches 3mo ago
I have contributed to this. Heliboard also great because it supports two finger swipe which is huge ergonomic improvement

backscratches 3mo ago

Can it do two finger swipe like Heliboard? Must have feature for modern swipe keyboard

deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]

arnorhs 3mo ago

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. 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.

reddalo 3mo ago
> because of the way the language works What's the problem of Icelandic? Is it because you stick words together like in Danish or German?
jonasced 3mo ago
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.

Jnr 3mo ago

Can we please get this for iPhone? Their keyboard is extremely imprecise, I have to go back and correct each sentence.

artisin 3mo ago

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.

tgtweak 3mo ago

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...)

arusahni 3mo ago
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. Unfortunately some of those Swype nicities are patented [1], so other keyboards can't use them. [1]: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7098896B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US7098896B2/en
- tgtweak 3mo ago
  I feel like a clean room opensource keyboard could implement those without any patent liabilities. Software patents are notoriously difficult to enforce and I don't think nuance is spending any money enforcing this given they stopped swype in 2018.
  - arusahni 3mo ago
    They're now owned by infamously-litigious Microsoft.
lproven 3mo ago
> swype was so good before it got destroyed by Nuance. 100% this. THE best text-entry method for touchscreens. Nuance enshittified it and then Microsoft killed it. https://www.theregister.com/on-prem/2022/06/06/microsofts-swype-still-the-best-software-keyboard-there-is/328522 https://www.theregister.com/on-prem/2022/06/06/microsofts-sw...

ErikGulliksen 3mo ago

I started using the main FUTO keyboard after seeing it mentioned here the other week. Then a few days later I tried to open my HSBC banking app and it refused to open because it detected FUTO keyboard which it treated as an insecure application, so had to remove FUTO after a couple of days of use.

amelius 3mo ago

Combine this with AI, and you only have to ramble a bit on your keyboard to get the collected works of Shakespeare.

3RTB297 3mo ago

Thanks for making this privacy-forward. I had been using Heliboard and then a kludge to get another language they don't support via Simple keyboard. It worked well as a workaround, and then an update last week broke my workaround. Futo just has all the languages I need, and does a better job with EN swipe than Heliboard. 100% convert. Plus, learning about Clearflow is a game changer.

krunck 3mo ago

This is great! As someone with one thumb that can't bend at either joint and another that doesn't bend well I've been a single finger typer on my phone. Thanks to all involved for this privacy respecting swipe keyboard!

yareally 3mo ago

Swiping feels a bit more accurate than Gboard overall. I'm not seeing a way to add a word to the dictionary. Am I missing something?

PennRobotics 3mo ago

Gboard has been messing with the emoji search recently. It is worse. Previously, if you type "fac" or "face" or "facep" or "facepa" or "palm" in the search box, you'd get the facepalm emoji among the results. Inexplicably, now the lying emoji, bacon, fondue are shown when you type "fac" but not the classic facepalm. It is only after you type "facepal" that the facepalm emoji appears in the results, which is a major... facepalm for the Gboard team. As a parent, I need to _constantly_ send the facepalm emoji to my partner, so I noticed immediately when it recently changed. I think they're now trying to account for multiple languages, misspellings, a larger list of synonyms that allows partial matches, sentiment/meaning/synonyms, etc. In any case, I've always felt like emojis should be weighted by overall usage patterns (I have never used the fondue emoji and don't know anyone who does) and now they need a better search trie, where the facepalm emoji is in the top results of "fac".