android app keyboard recommendations

[anitakate]

Hii Everyone,
I  just  have curiosity that which android keyboard is best to used.?

[KynloStephen66515]

GBoard (Google).

[Ath]

Depends on what you want to type, for my tablet I use Hackers Keyboard by Esc (Play store link), that has cursor keys to facilitate (somewhat) easier text selection using shift/control + cursor keys.

[anandcoral]

Agree with Stephen and Ath.

For using in phone, GBoard is the best now. I have used many and came back always.
For tablet and if you want some editing big text benefit, Hackers Keyboard is the best, as it gives same keyboard as like pc, including TAB and ESC keys.

Regards,

Anand

[wraith808]

I use switftkey sometimes, but gbkard has actually become quite good.

[IainB]

Ultimately, which keyboard seems "most suitable" for a user will depend on the user's peculiar  requirements - which, from experience, are usually little understood and rarely defined.
There have been a few references in the DC Forum discussions to the Microsoft product  SwiftKey (MS apparently bought up the company several years ago.)
I only recently started using a smartphone for my own purposes (though I have set up smartphones for other people to use for at least a couple of years), as there is some functionality available that can't so easily be utilised via a laptop, though I do use an Android emulator on the laptop so that I can mirror the Android device's system on the laptop. I plumped for a refurbished Samsung Galaxy S7 with the Google keyboard. Very good. It was a no-brainer.

But it was whilst I was setting up a Japanese and a Thai keyboard for a couple of users that I started to research and experiment in earnest with other keyboard apps than the obvious ones mentioned in this thread (above) and which are otherwise very good.
That's when I stumbled upon SwiftKey. I was initially very skeptical (because it was a Microsoft product, after all!), but, on reading user reviews, I couldn't find a single real criticism - it was mostly all positives. So, rather than get the other users to be guinea-pigs and experiment with this unknown app, I tested it out pretty thoroughly on my own smartphone first.
Because I tend to be rather critical and see all the warts in things, I have rarely been blown away by any application's functionality and potential - sadlement, they are nearly all defective in some regard.
Not so SwiftKey, it seems. After trialling it, I subsequently installed it for the other users, and they too were blown away by it. The hardest part was getting them to actually try it out in the first place ("suck-it-and-see"). The built-in ergonomics and predictive and lots of other functionality in SwiftKey seem to leave most of the other keyboards standing in the dust.
Well worth a try, I'd suggest.

[tomos]

^I just typed an in depth comparison of Swiftkey and Gboard and it got deleted by this ddos protection system :-/

Summary

I missed Swiftkey after moving from a Windows to an Android phone. The autocorrect is much better imo (it *is* weaker in some areas, e.g. if I accidentally ty pe a space in a word).

I cant yet figure out how to easily change (already chosen) language keyboards in it. This is very intuitive and clear in Gboard (long press on spacebar). Autocorrect in both seem to be able to cope well with changing languages on the fly, even within a sentence (I often end up typing Denglish, a mix of German and English).

Google/Android is pretty obnoxious about me choosing another keyboard:
warns  "This input method may be able to collect the text I type, including [..]". Which makes me wonder if google are already doing that :-/
They add an icon to the bottom bar to enable a quick return to Gboard -- it clutters and doesn't look good EDIT// actually only allows switch to Google voice board

[IainB]

^I just typed an in depth comparison of Swiftkey and Gboard and it got deleted by this ddos protection system :-/ 

Yes, I know, that can be so annoying. 
Workaround: Save everything repeatedly with CHS, so that you don't have to re-create the disappeared text.

[KynloStephen66515]

I cant yet figure out how to easily change (already chosen) language keyboards in it. This is very intuitive and clear in Gboard (long press on spacebar). Autocorrect in both seem to be able to cope well with changing languages on the fly, even within a sentence (I often end up typing Denglish, a mix of German and English).

I love the multilingual option within GBoard, even if it does mean I send random italian words in the middle of english sentences, when I'm paying no attention lol.

[IainB]

I cant yet figure out how to easily change (already chosen) language keyboards in it.

Try swiping the space bar sideways...

[4wd]

I cant yet figure out how to easily change (already chosen) language keyboards in it. This is very intuitive and clear in Gboard (long press on spacebar).

Interesting, didn't know that - my GBoard has a world symbol next the space bar: tap it and it cycles through whatever keyboards you have; long press and it shows a selection list.

Of course, that means I can inadvertently tap it instead of the space bar and find myself typing in Cyrillic 

[Deozaan]

I suspect that this thread was created to facilitate a spammer to advertise some Android keyboard app sometime in the next few days/weeks.

But it seems it has initiated a decent discussion nonetheless.

I cant yet figure out how to easily change (already chosen) language keyboards in it.

Try swiping the space bar sideways...

This just moves the caret back and forth for me.

[tomos]

I cant yet figure out how to easily change (already chosen) language keyboards in it.

Try swiping the space bar sideways...

This just moves the caret back and forth for me.

this works now for me (thanks) . I don't think it did initially: the keyboard name was also not initially shown. But all good now 

[tomos]

I cant yet figure out how to easily change (already chosen) language keyboards in it. This is very intuitive and clear in Gboard (long press on spacebar).

Interesting, didn't know that - my GBoard has a world symbol [attachment 1 not found] next the space bar: tap it and it cycles through whatever keyboards you have; long press and it shows a selection list.

Of course, that means I can inadvertently tap it instead of the space bar and find myself typing in Cyrillic 

with me it's not so extreme, I just get my z's and my y's confused :-)

[IainB]

I cant yet figure out how to easily change (already chosen) language keyboards in it. This is very intuitive and clear in Gboard (long press on spacebar).

Interesting, didn't know that - my GBoard has a world symbol [attachment 1 not found] next the space bar: tap it and it cycles through whatever keyboards you have; long press and it shows a selection list.

Of course, that means I can inadvertently tap it instead of the space bar and find myself typing in Cyrillic 

That's what is meant by "poor ergonomic design" - i.e., conducive to enablement of common/predictable human error.
My users had similar problems when selecting another language keyboard using the Google keyboard (and other common keyboards). Problem went away with SwiftKey. They really seem to have thought of everything, but I suspect that that itself is probably attributable to the fact the product has been out there for some years now and has had a consistently focused development/testing/improvement program which is now in the optimisation phase. I can see why Microsoft might have wanted to buy them up.
I think the ergonomic design of SwiftKey is damn near perfect - and that's not so much just the keyboard design and functionality, but includes some incredibly smart integration with other functionality - e.g., including things such as fonts and styles (bold, italic, etc.), clipboard management, hotkey definitions for a collection of repeatable strings).
That's why I was blown away by the app.
It's a pleasure to know that there are specialised product designers/developers out there in the SwiftKey team who can produce such a result.

[tomos]

I cant yet figure out how to easily change (already chosen) language keyboards in it.

Try swiping the space bar sideways...

This just moves the caret back and forth for me.

this works now for me (thanks) . I don't think it did initially: the keyboard name was also not initially shown. But all good now 

Deozaan, I see the keyboard name is not shown when on the numeric part of the keyboard -- could that have been what happened with you?

[Deozaan]

I don't think so.

It's a feature of Gboard to help you set the location of the cursor precisely without having your finger in the way. Swiping the keyboard left or right moves the cursor left or right, respectively.

[tomos]

I don't think so.

It's a feature of Gboard to help you set the location of the cursor precisely without having your finger in the way. Swiping the keyboard left or right moves the cursor left or right, respectively.

ah, I was talking about the Swift keyboard, mind you both show loaded-language keyboards on the spacebar -- they do have to be selected in Languages to show (with apologies if I'm stating the obvious).