[HN Gopher] OpenBoard - FOSS Keyboard for Android which respects...
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OpenBoard - FOSS Keyboard for Android which respects your privacy
Author : mikepechadotcom
Score : 171 points
Date : 2021-01-07 10:43 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| anotheryou wrote:
| Anything OSS that swipes and supports 2 languages at once with
| that?
| MayeulC wrote:
| I use AnysoftKeyboard (on F-Droid) [1]. I's pretty good, but has
| issues with the French apostrophe, that's often used to combine
| words.
|
| It also has multiple keyboard layouts, of which "terminal"
| compares favorably to hacker's keyboard. I like that it is
| configurable, and has a lot of text editing tools when swiping
| space up.
|
| I admit I lost some typing speed when I switched from the
| alternatives, but I'm happier with it.
|
| [1] https://anysoftkeyboard.github.io/
| ce4 wrote:
| ASK has one Keyboard layout that includes cursor keys,
| tab/ctrl/pipe and forward slash. Very handy for termux and to
| move the cursor around which i also use all the time.
|
| There's also the copy paste popup that can be activated by
| swiping up on the space bar which offers a nice cursor based
| highlight/copy/paste mode.
| pqb wrote:
| I second the AnySoftKeyboard. It is nice alternative, however I
| miss the mode that resembles BlackBerry 10 keyboard, especially
| in case of autocompletion suggestions that popped over specific
| letter and I had to swipe it up [0] in order to complete the
| word. It was many times more pleasant to use than the
| "selection bar".
|
| [0]:
| https://helpblog.blackberry.com/en/2013/02/blackberry-10-key...
| Peter-Jan wrote:
| I love AnysoftKeyboard but it completely freezes once every few
| days when pressing the emoji key. Forcing me to reboot my
| phone. Which is quite annoying to say the least.
|
| https://github.com/AnySoftKeyboard/AnySoftKeyboard/issues/18...
| aasasd wrote:
| Just as a workaround: you can stop the app without rebooting
| the phone. The full app list is probably not accessible, but
| you can go via the 'apps' menu in the settings.
| aasasd wrote:
| Alas ASK could use an influx of developer efforts. Menny Even-
| Danan seems to be the sole developer (aside from some pull
| requests), and it looks like other stuff is keeping him busy
| lately--as in, in the past couple years at least.
|
| I keep being perplexed when people reinvent software instead of
| joining forces (though I'm fine either way if the result is
| good). A better swipe-typing algorithm would be great, but even
| some smaller touches would make ASK much nicer: like, don't add
| a space after an opening parenthesis when swiping. Not rocket
| science, but needs someone to dig in the app's workings.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| I just now figured I'd try AnySoftKeyboard. Its stock behaviour
| seems a little weird in places, but I'll try it for a while and
| see how it goes. But the real thing that's annoying me is how
| uncompromisingly _huge_ it is. Its default behaviour has it
| consuming a shade under two thirds of the available screen
| space on my not-inordinately-large phone, compared with under
| half on the Samsung keyboard in its compact (reduced-height)
| mode. You can control the height of the _top_ row (and it's
| compact by default), but can't control the height of the rest
| (other than by going to a theme that consumes _even more_
| space)? I want to eliminate the wasted ~30px at the bottom, and
| shrink each row by around 20px. I can _easily_ save 100px here
| without removing anything.
| aasasd wrote:
| ASK's preferences organization could use some work. What you
| want is in the 'select theme' screen: press the gear, then
| see 'keys height factor'.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| Ah hah! Thank you. 0.65 is much better. Yeah, that gear
| thing is terribly placed.
| MayeulC wrote:
| I agree it's a bit big, I tend to configure my keyboards to
| use the minimal size. That said, there are multiple themes to
| pick from, and some are smaller than others. You could
| conceivably make your own, though I have never tried.
|
| Edit: thanks a lot aasasd, I had just spent a few minutes
| looking for it (again), without finding it.
| dastx wrote:
| AnySoftKeyboard on the surface seems cool, however, they've
| overloaded it with unnecessary characters. When I tried it, I
| had English selected and yet somehow it has characters that are
| _never_ used in English. That's not necessarily an issue, but
| when non-English characters are easier to type than English
| characters, it decreases my typing speed significantly. I
| raised an issue about it and was quickly dismissed. I've stuck
| to SwiftKey since. I'll have to try OpenBoard!
| circularfoyers wrote:
| I don't see any reason why someone would use OpenBoard over
| AnySoftKeyboard. It would of been nice if there was an
| explanation of what differentiated it. If someone just wanted a
| different looking keyboard they could just have created a new
| theme for AnySoftKeyboard.
|
| AnySoftKeyboard also is the only open source keyboard for
| Android that has gesture typing. Which is something I grew to
| love from when I used Gboard.
| pmontra wrote:
| Swyping didn't work reliably when I tried one year ago, so I
| switched back to one of the keyboards of my phone (SwiftKey
| because I find it slightly better than Samsung's one.) Did
| they improve it in the last releases?
| circularfoyers wrote:
| I'm not sure if they improved it or it just works more
| reliably with the default theme. But about a year ago it
| was unusable but now I'm able to use it with only
| occasional errors.
|
| Of course it's still not as good as Gboard, but I'd rather
| put up with the slight inconvenience for it being open
| source.
| ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote:
| There is a pull request open which improves the algorithm
| massively. Author couldn't finish it because of health
| issues sadly. I've installed it on my phone and it works
| great but I had to update some parameters in the code so
| it'd work.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| For me, it just doesn't do the job. I love ASK but this
| feature isn't competitive with the closed source
| alternatives.
|
| Alas, I wish it were. This is all that's missing IMO.
| bestouff wrote:
| Can't upvote this enough.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| The search function on FDroid is atrocious. I find all the
| language packs for Anysoftkeyboard but not the keyboard
| itself.
| scns wrote:
| I concur, Foxy Droid works much better for me.
| yorwba wrote:
| https://f-droid.org/packages/com.menny.android.anysoftkeybo
| a...
|
| I think the search function is working fine, the app is
| just called "AnySoftKeyboard 3D Theme" in the F-Droid app
| but not on the website for some reason.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| Then why I can't find it even with your keywords?
|
| The other possibility is that it's not present for me
| because it might not be compatible with GrapheneOS?
|
| But I have problems with search even for other apps. I'm
| OK with it it because FDroid is very good otherwise.
| vinay427 wrote:
| It shows up for me on GrapheneOS. I don't think the
| F-Droid search is OS-dependent anyways besides maybe the
| major Android version number. As the GP noted, for some
| reason the name is listed with the "3D Theme" addendum in
| the app which is a little bizarre. Does your browser
| support opening the link in an app, i.e. F-Droid?
| solarkraft wrote:
| With all default repos + IzzyOnDroid enabled and
| searching exactly for that package name I get all the
| language packs and a 7 years old PC theme, but not the
| app itself. I'll just download the APK, I guess.
| circularfoyers wrote:
| For future reference you can use the "Open in app" option
| in Firefox to open the app in F-Droid from the website
| link in the parent.
| tumblewit wrote:
| As a very long term iOS user, when I saw this headline my first
| reaction was why is keyboard privacy even a thing i've never even
| bothered changing the keyboard of iOS and would certainly be
| prompted for any suspicious activity like mic or camera and would
| instantly reject it if i ever installed one. But this is very
| complicated on Android. I once maintained an Android phone for my
| Dad and the permissions prompt on that are so overwhelming that
| it's very easy to get people into 'accepting all' and I feel like
| this is the idea behind the design by Google. One shouldn't be
| worried about a keyboard spying about you and should be as easy
| as flip of a switch in settings from not allowing it but it's a
| lot more complicated than that on Android.
| izacus wrote:
| Well, iOS uses the same differential ML approach for their
| keyboard suggestion learning just like Google's GBoard does. So
| you kinda have the same concern there.
| sepnax wrote:
| I don't know if this post was supposed to be funny, but it
| certainly made me laugh.
| Kelamir wrote:
| > and should be as easy as flip of a switch in settings from
| not allowing it but it's a lot more complicated than that on
| Android.
|
| One can just check the permissions of a keyboard to see if it
| includes internet access. If it does, don't use it.
| cooperadymas wrote:
| I've never had the notion or urge to try a different keyboard
| than what came with the various Android phones I've had over the
| years. It looks like there are some possible privacy benefits to
| it, but why else should I switch? What advantage do other
| keyboards give or what is wrong with the default ones?
| Normal_gaussian wrote:
| I don't know about open source privacy centric keyboards, but I
| bought Minuum many years ago and its awesome. It gives me way
| more screen real estate (particularly useful if I'm commenting
| and referencing previous messages). I'm really concerned about
| it stopping working one day.
| Sunspark wrote:
| I can only use the SwiftKey keyboard for physical reasons. I have
| a big 6.7" device, and this keyboard allows me to type with the
| keyboard closer to the middle of the screen. If I type on the
| bottom, it's harder to hold the device and it becomes unbalanced.
|
| If they haven't already done so since last time I checked, I
| encourage the FOSS keyboards to consider adding a "raise the
| position" of the keyboard feature.
| older wrote:
| Is it better than Hacker's Keyboard?
| https://github.com/klausw/hackerskeyboard
| lucb1e wrote:
| It takes very little to be better than Hacker's Keyboard. For
| me suggestions are broken altogether, but if you randomly get
| them to work and type "Ecample" it will not suggest anything
| because there are no words with that prefix. It also doesn't
| look at the previous word to bias which are likely next words
| (either in general or combined with the characters already
| typed). It's the dumbest keyboard ever, which is very nice on
| virtual terminals (hence it being a hacker's keyboard and my
| having it installed), but it's not useful as a general purpose
| keyboard.
| app4soft wrote:
| As for me, there are no alternatives to Hacker's Keyboard yet.
| SftwreEngnr wrote:
| Who cares?
| stiray wrote:
| For me hackers keyboard is still far best keyboard found, the
| only thing that annoys me is that it has no smileys button, for
| everything else it fits great.
|
| I use ssh a lot and all the suggestions and other bells and
| whistles of other keyboards are more annoyance than anything
| else, but i need access to all the keys that normal keyboard
| has.
|
| And '/', tab and enter must be accessible all the time this is
| absolutely primary requirement for me to use any keyboard.
| hyperpallium2 wrote:
| Space doesn't repeat, and will not fix.
| stiray wrote:
| You dont need to, I got myself cosmo communicator[1] and
| running linux (but still waiting for them to support camera
| to stop using the android phone completely). I am sick of
| androoogle ecosystem and touch keyboards :)
|
| [1]https://store.planetcom.co.uk/products/cosmo-
| communicator
| URfejk wrote:
| I use Hacker's Keyboard. It is good enough for me.
| thelittleone wrote:
| This clean layout looks great.
|
| I've moved from IOS to Android 6 months ago and have been
| frustrated by a high % of intended alpha char keystrokes ending
| up as stickers culminating recently in me sending "I miss you"
| sticker to my boss.
| dingaling wrote:
| Still using the inverted-triangle row arrangement, though.
|
| If we're stuck with on-screen keyboards, please at least maximise
| use of horizontal space to make each 'key' as wide as possible.
| There's no need to copy the century-old typewriter convention.
|
| I have a compact Cherry server-rack physical keyboard with the
| keys arranged in a grid and it's perfectly usable.
| llarsson wrote:
| No gesture typing, unfortunately. I miss that feature from
| GBoard, whenever I try an open source one.
|
| Yes, ASK has it, but it is not at all smart about figuring out
| what word I mean if I happen to not start my gesture on the
| exactly right starting letter.
| xthetrfd wrote:
| You can use the swipe functionality of the gboard even with the
| open source android keyboard provided you are rooted. It's just
| a library file that you have to install.
| lucb1e wrote:
| No gesture typing in 2011, ahem, 2021 is not even worth
| considering to me.
|
| I'm using a closed source keyboard because it just works better
| than all the open stuff (at least when I last tried various
| keyboard in ~2018), but have it firewalled off completely in
| AfWall+. That means no updates, though it learns new words like
| COVID-19 well enough from me, but also no data leaking (I'd
| happily contribute typing stats if it were some non-profit
| handling my data).
| solarkraft wrote:
| Which one do you use?
| ktm5j wrote:
| Holy crow, the feature where you can move the cursor by swiping
| back and forth on the spacebar is AMAZING. Seriously, I have
| always struggled with moving the cursor in text on either android
| or ios. This is great!
| Kelamir wrote:
| Not only that. You can also erase text by swiping left starting
| from the delete button.
| ktm5j wrote:
| Neat!
| chrysoprace wrote:
| I've been using OpenBoard for over a year and I didn't know
| this!
| whalesalad wrote:
| On iOS hold down the space bar and it becomes a mouse cursor.
| 72deluxe wrote:
| On iPad, use 2 fingers on the keyboard and the keyboard
| becomes a touchpad.
| akvadrako wrote:
| Yes, it's amazing. And this also works on the default
| Android/iOS keyboards too.
| ktm5j wrote:
| oh.. really? Now I feel silly haha
| Topgamer7 wrote:
| Yeah its super useful. Although the detection of it is not
| perfect. Sometimes you end up inserting a space (:
| archi42 wrote:
| Hm, tried it, but it doesn't seem to work that way on the
| AOSP keyboard (LineageOS/Android9 here). Either hits '.' or
| the language change button, or I get the "select keyboard
| layout" pop up due to a long press on space.
|
| Will check out OpenBoard, because this sounds like a great
| feature.
| the_pwner224 wrote:
| On lineageos there's an option somewhere in the system
| settings to make the volume buttons move the cursor when
| the keyboard is open.
| wayneftw wrote:
| It does not work on the default iOS keyboard. You can't just
| slide your finger around the spacebar, you have to long press
| on the keyboard and hope you don't trigger the alternate
| character popup instead. Then while you're moving the cursor
| around, half the time it will just start selecting text.
| Moving the cursor sucks on iOS.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| I'm an android guy, but force touch moving cursor on iOS
| works very fine. Better than spacebar sliding. Just press
| harder on on keyboard and it'll hide keys and let you desk
| the cursor around, mouse style.
| wayneftw wrote:
| https://imgur.com/agqXWWJ
|
| That's me pasting your comment into a reply box and then
| using my iPhone 8 to move the cursor around. Once I start
| moving the cursor all I'm doing is moving it, nothing
| else. You can see that it starts selecting text randomly
| twice. It actually took me longer to trigger it this time
| than usual.
|
| I think it happens when I moved to the top of the text
| and then make a downward motion. It's really, really
| annoying on a regular basis.
| lights0123 wrote:
| All in production iPhones don't have force touch.
| akvadrako wrote:
| I also thought it worked better than Android on the SE 1.
| Happpy wrote:
| I'm using it with a colemak layout. The only thing I'm missing is
| multi language predictions. Now I have to switch(long press
| space) layouts each time I need another language.
|
| I regularly use the swipe spacebar and swipe backspace.
|
| I never use speech or swiping
| nonbirithm wrote:
| Really, really wish there was Japanese support. That's one of the
| main reasons I have to keep using Gboard.
|
| Also, my typing ability on mobile has been spoiled by Google's
| admittedly superior autocorrect. I find that many of the frequent
| mistakes I make are not detected or modified incorrectly on other
| keyboards, and have to re-learn a lot. It almost feels like
| vendor lock-in from bad typing habits.
| NDICjQ2zlm5vJ6S wrote:
| I've used a bunch of open source Japanese keyboards: Mozc[0]
| (might be related to Gboard? haven't used gboard but the app is
| based off the same source code that powers Google IME),
| nicoWnnG[1]. I'm not sure how well they fare compared to
| proprietary keyboards but they've been good enough for my
| occasional use of Japanese.
|
| [0]:
| https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.mozc.android.inputmethod...
| [1]:
| https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.gorry.android.input.nico...
| Markoff wrote:
| no swipe typing, I find much easier just use Gboard and disable
| internet access to Gboard through firewall and you don't need to
| care about privacy
| przmk wrote:
| Fun fact, one of my banking app prevents me from launching it if
| I do not use a "certified" keyboard app. I had bad luck with any
| keyboard from F-Droid.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| And for good reason. It's the operating system that should
| offer a 'certified secure' keyboard if the app requests it
| though. A bit like Windows' account password entry screen that
| is sandboxed from the rest of the OS (if I understood it
| correctly).
| przmk wrote:
| In this case, the app has its own keypad when logging in so
| I'm not sure what the added value is security-wise.
|
| I'm just not able to launch the app while an F-Droid keyboard
| is set as default which is just annoying. There's many
| keyboards on the Play Store that I wouldn't trust to install
| and use.
| turminal wrote:
| Banking apps are such a disgrace. Full of weird ideas about
| what is ok and what is not and which data and whatnot they need
| or else they won't run and in the end it doesn't help at all.
| fogihujy wrote:
| My bank recognizes the risk that third-party keyboard apps
| pose, and has their own keypad in their authentication app.
|
| The same bank has a maximum password length of 8 characters,
| and they'll truncate longer passwords without informing the
| user -- set the password to "correct horse battery staple"
| and you'll be able to log in with "correct ". When I pointed
| it out they recommended setting a shorter password.
| syncbehind wrote:
| Honestly at this point why even bother with banking apps? I've
| found that most of my banking needs can be done via their
| mobile-webpages.
| przmk wrote:
| Well, one of the banking app that I use is really well done
| (the other one is garbage), it makes my life really easier
| and has QR code payments included which is how I pay
| everything online in my country (Belgium) instead of having
| to use the card reader and it's also how I reimburse my
| friends if I owe them money.
|
| And it has NFC payments that does not use Google Pay which is
| also nice.
| Kinrany wrote:
| I use Fleksy, its predictions and gesture controls are fantastic.
| Is there an open keyboard that does the same?
| 3r8riacz wrote:
| Once you get used to the honeycomb pattern, there is no turning
| back from Typewise:
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.icoaching.w...
|
| It has a free version, too, but the beta users were upgraded to
| the paid version earlier. Not opensource but doesn't even have
| access to the net.
| andrew_ wrote:
| Sadly these come and go so frequently that unless you're into
| constantly tinkering, it can be exhausting to keep up with which
| keyboard is or is not in active development and receiving
| updates. OpenBoard seems to be suffering the same
| https://github.com/dslul/openboard/issues/250
| sedatk wrote:
| A privacy-preserving keyboard on Android feels like having a
| stainless steel water flask in the middle of a desert. Yeah,
| great but...
| smichel17 wrote:
| I use an old version of the Swype keyboard, that came pre-
| installed on my Galaxy S6. Unfortunately, I've become so used to
| swipe and gesture support (particularly "Ctrl"-{a,x,c,v}) that
| I'm waiting on a FLO keyboard that can do those things to switch.
| troyvit wrote:
| I haven't seen Multiling O Keyboard
| (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=kl.ime.oh)
| mentioned yet. It's not nearly as accurate as Gboard out of the
| box but once you get used to it and train it well it's not bad.
| It is insanely configurable.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| How is this different from AnySoftKeyboard ? I have been using
| that for a long time now
| pjmlp wrote:
| I fail to see why the use of native code.
|
| If it is to respect privacy, it should also not have any use of
| CVE friendly languages, hiding possible exploits.
| Noxmiles wrote:
| Well, it seems not to have a Swype functionality. Actually, on
| small Touchscreens without feedback this is quite essential.
|
| We really need an full open source keyboard with some kind of
| Swype. Sadly I don't know any.
| aasasd wrote:
| AnySoftKeyboard has swipe-typing, though alas it's not as
| smooth as in commercial apps.
| troyvit wrote:
| Multiling O Keyboard
| (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=kl.ime.oh) has
| swipe. Accuracy is not great and it takes awhile to train but
| it doesn't have internet permissions at all. It's also highly
| configurable.
| aasasd wrote:
| It didn't have the net permission until sometime in 2019,
| when it started to have it--without any indication as to why,
| and even the text 'no internet permission = safer' remained
| on the store page.
|
| It seems the permission is again dropped now--but see user
| reviews for indication that it was indeed once used. For such
| a personal and important piece of software I for one will
| prefer an app that doesn't flip-flop on this decision--who's
| to say that it won't flip again tomorrow? The app is great;
| it being closed, not so much.
| bestboy wrote:
| In case one is using LineageOS, what keyboard is used then? Is it
| the vanilla AOSP keyboard? How does the LineageOS keyboard
| compare to privacy conscious keyboards like this one or the
| AnysoftKeyboard?
| approxim8ion wrote:
| My understanding is the LOS very much uses the vanilla AOSP
| keyboard, which is basic but FOSS so about the same privacy-
| wise as this or ASK.
| vdddv wrote:
| Does that mean that the "default" keyboard on Android does not
| respect my privacy? As in, what does it do? Should I be worried
| about entering username, passwords etc from my Android device?
| lucb1e wrote:
| The "default" keyboard differs from device to device. Most
| devices have a closed source keyboard either from Google
| (gboard) or from Microsoft (swiftkey). If I remember correctly,
| both send subsets of what you type to the mothership and pinky
| swear to only use it for product improvement and guard your
| data with their lives.
| Bellamy wrote:
| So Xiaomi, Google, Samsung etc. knows everything we write and
| erase?
|
| I getting really paranoid...
| izacus wrote:
| Google claims to use differential privacy / federated
| learning for their GBoard:
| https://ai.googleblog.com/2020/05/federated-analytics-
| collab...
|
| No idea about others.
| pedrogpimenta wrote:
| "Default" may mean different things. A Samsung phone has a
| Samsung keyboard as the default keyboard, while a Pixel would
| have Gboard (I guess).
|
| I assume they send every word you type to their servers, but I
| also assume it's encrypted in transport, so it would be
| somewhat safe?
|
| It's a very very difficult struggle.
| quyleanh wrote:
| What are OpenBoard's advantages over Simple Keyboard?
| sbt567 wrote:
| I'm using FlorisBoard which is amazing!. It's just recently
| developed and many features still WIP. But excited to see the
| future!
| lcnmrn wrote:
| Simple Keyboard is both on F-Droid and Play Store.
| https://github.com/rkkr/simple-keyboard
| betamike wrote:
| Just a note for anyone checking it out, Simple Keyboard doesn't
| support spellcheck (which is why I use OpenBoard instead).
| fogihujy wrote:
| I'll add a vote for Simple Keyboard. It's lightweight, fast,
| and does exactly what it says on the package.
| chrysoprace wrote:
| I love OpenBoard but their development has been very slow in the
| time that I've been using it. It's really solid for the most part
| but there's just a couple of features (like swipe-typing, and
| emoji search) that I wish it had. Still though, better than
| GBoard spying on me.
| CarVac wrote:
| I use MessagEase, which has a wacky layout that makes typos much
| less frequent, and thus doesn't need autocorrect.
|
| Not open-source, unfortunately.
| helmholtz wrote:
| Oof. Just looked it up and it immediately gets my fancy. How
| was the learning curve? And any downsides that you now have?
| CarVac wrote:
| It took me only three or so days to get used to it.
|
| The lack of autocorrect was so refreshing that I just kept
| typing for practice.
|
| The downside now is that, unlike the QWERTY to Dvorak switch,
| I've become exceedingly clumsy at typing on ordinary phone
| keyboards.
| helmholtz wrote:
| It's proving to be right up my alley. I switched to
| programmer's dvorak on the PC for exactly this reason; in
| the harebrained pursuit of ever increasing ergonomic
| efficiency!
| helmholtz wrote:
| I'm sold :) Going to try it out for a couple of weeks and
| see how it feels.
| Semaphor wrote:
| Thanks, this looks interesting. And the settings. So many
| settings and I love settings :D
|
| No permissions at all is pretty impressive. The only thing I
| can't figure out: How will they make money? They seem to have
| run a IndieGoGo campaign and now ask for donations (hidden in
| the settings), but that will eventually run out.
|
| This is especially worrying with something as specialized as
| this.
| CarVac wrote:
| The lack of availability in the future and on other platforms
| (such as non-Android Linux phones) is my only worry.
|
| But it shouldn't be _that_ hard to clone, if something should
| happen to it.
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| Great project. It's funny that we are at a point where even
| keyboard apps are spying on your personal and private data.
| Crazy.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| Yes, a keyboard app just should not allowed to have a network
| connection, but yeah, a thing to dream in 2021.
| aargh_aargh wrote:
| As an Android user, not developer, I wanted to ask how are
| permissions on Android these days.
|
| Is "internet access" permission just granted for any app by
| default without asking the user?
|
| There were initiatives (probably 3rd party) for more granular
| permissions, but I haven't noticed this becoming common. I
| vaguely remember that Android started asking for some
| individual permissions not upon installation, but only when
| they were first used by the app, e.g. camera access. Why is
| this not the case for internet access?
|
| In a nutshell, how did permission granting in stock Android
| develop from say Android 3.x times?
|
| I understand that some keyboards want to provide suggestions
| using a dictionary they download online. Also, I used to use
| SwiftKey once which wanted to read all my mail to produce
| better suggestions. Is there even a good way to balance the
| benefits (features) and risks (uploading a key log if the app
| is sold/abandoned and taken over by an attacker)?
| netizen-9748 wrote:
| A good solution to this is using iptables to control what
| has access to which networks, rather than relying on the
| OS. AFWall+ is a nice front end for iptables and requires
| root. Netguard is another option that doesn't require root,
| but I'm not sure how that one works.
| fy20 wrote:
| Certain permissions (internet is one example) are granted
| when the app is installed, other permissions (e.g. access
| to photos) require the user to give access through a dialog
| prompt (and from Android 10(?) the user will be asked again
| every so often, rather than just once).
|
| All permissions an app can use are listed in the manifest
| file, and are displayed on Google Play.
| est31 wrote:
| > Is "internet access" permission just granted for any app
| by default without asking the user?
|
| IIRC it was changed because people complained that a lot of
| apps required that permission despite the functionality not
| needing it. E.g. calculator app or whatever. Turns out that
| you need this permission if you want to display ads. So
| Google just sided with the advertisers and removed the
| permission from the display. Generally, I believe that
| Google likes internet connected things because they as a
| company have better tools to capture online revenue streams
| vs offline ones.
| darkwater wrote:
| Even if I hate ads and I think one should be able to ban
| them forever on their devices, Android could just add an
| "Internet access" permission that only counts for
| Internet access required outside the Ads API, so they
| would keep their ads and users could be a bit safer on
| the "this app is snooping my data" side.
| wongarsu wrote:
| That would only work if they open up the Ads API to work
| with any ad network. Otherwise it would basically kill
| any competition in the Android Ad space, which would
| probably lead to EU and US regulators coming down hard on
| Google.
| kelchqvjpnfasjl wrote:
| > outside the Ads API
|
| Presumably these Ad APIs would be for access to Google
| Ads. That would seem like an anti-trust issue.
| aargh_aargh wrote:
| I agree that it would be nice to separate the privileges
| if it were possible.
|
| I suspect that allowing internet access even in the form
| of ads opens the possibility for data exfiltration in
| principle. But I'm not familiar with the Android case at
| all.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| It allows for _expensive_ , _obvious_ data exfiltration.
| (Expensive in the sense that somebody else could take the
| data, unless you 're the highest bidder for those
| categories - assuming Google Ads still shows ads with a
| bid of 0, which I'm not confident in.)
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Could you imagine the complaining for treating different
| ad libraries differently?
| est31 wrote:
| It's coming for the hardware keyboards as well. See comments in
| this thread:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/95f7lw/das_keyboard_...
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| In theory, they keep your data private, combine it with the
| greater learnings of the world, and provide you with perfect
| autocomplete and autocorrect.
|
| In practice though, it just doesn't work. I got GBoard for a
| while because it has a bilingual keyboard, but the autocomplete
| suggestions often ended up being people's first names instead
| of common words (and not even the people I was talking to).
| jfengel wrote:
| I speak French much better with GBoard, because it spells
| better than I do. It also has a pretty good sense of grammar:
| it will often autocomplete the correct ending of a verb. (It
| feels like cheating to use it with Duolingo.)
|
| Of course I speak only simple French, and those are the cases
| where its primitive learning is most apt. When I speak
| English, its suggestions are less useful, because I use a
| much wider vocabulary and more sophisticated sentence
| structure.
| StavrosK wrote:
| I would love it if we could get something like SwiftKey, but
| actively developed. Its predictions are magic, but lately it has
| been getting more and more buggy, suggesting words that don't
| exist, changing already-correct words to nonsense, and refusing
| to learn.
| philips wrote:
| I am experiencing the same issues with GBoard: suggestions just
| getting worse and worse.
|
| I dug through the settings and haven't seen anything obvious.
| popeathlete wrote:
| Try AnySoftKeyboard. Works great and is FOSS.
| przmk wrote:
| In my experience, the predictions were atrocious and not very
| smart, at least in French. It also couldn't detect words that
| had personal pronouns or determiners with an apostrophe, I
| had to type the apostrophe manually which is a no-go for me.
|
| And it does not support having multiple languages at once
| which is incredibly inconvenient when you frequently have to
| switch between 4 languages when typing and when you often mix
| some of them.
|
| But if you type without the autocorrect and the predictions,
| it can be great, I guess.
| cerved wrote:
| this. gboard is the only solution I've used that's decent
| at multilingual typing
|
| it still gets confused when you mix languages but in
| general it's ok
| Semaphor wrote:
| Try deleting cache and data (backup your personal dictionary
| first). As with everything _smart_ that _learns_ (obviously
| YMMV, but that is my experience) it gets worse over time. Back
| when I used SwiftKey I deleted everything once a month to have
| a decent experience.
| catacombs wrote:
| Is there an iOS version?
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