The only app I can’t live without. Except for gboard, all of my applications are Foss. There is no competition for gboard’s swipe typing, not to mention its many capabilities like as searching for gifs, stickers, being able to paste copied images, translating, and so on. I’d like to know how I can use gboard while maintaining my privacy. According to what I’ve heard, it sends all typing data to Google’s server. If you ask me, that’s a massive no-no. Do you have any suggestions?

  • ijeff@lemdro.idMEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Leaving this up because there are some good discussions here already and it’s a great question. I’d just flag rule 2 in the sidebar and that we ask questions and recommendation requests to be posted in !askandroid@lemdro.id instead. Thanks!

    • Sl00k@programming.devEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      Off topic question, don’t you guys think splintering the Android community into multiple communities specifically for certain things when there are so few people on the Lemmy platform will lead to the instance becoming driy without content? Not sure if there’s been discussion about this yet.

      • ijeff@lemdro.idMEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Lemmy unfortunately doesn’t currently have functionality that could help people curate the type of content they want to see from within a single community (e.g., hiding posts, filtering by tags). Maintaining separate communities is more work for the moderators but gives people the choice to decide what kind of content to subscribe to when populating their “Subscribed” view.

        Our hope is to foster a space that’s scratches the r/android itch with !android@lemdro.id, while also having a space set aside for questions, support, and seeking recommendations with !askandroid@lemdro.id. There’s also a tendency toward better quality responses for the latter when it’s in a community of people who have deliberately subscribed because they like to help folks out. That’s the thinking at least.

        Do feel free to join us on the Matrix chat anytime! https://matrix.to/#/#lemdro.id:matrix.org

  • schmensch@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    A lot oft ROMs allow you go completely disable Internet access for a certain app. Disabling the data collection toggles in GBoard and disabling internet access for GBoard, Play Services, Play Store and the Google App should prevent most logging.

    • hiire@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      Does Lineage allow this? It’s the rom I’m considering for my Galaxy Note 10

      • WhoRoger@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Aha, that’s why it’s not on F-Droid. That makes sense.

        Still, it doesn’t connect to the internet so unless there’s something very sneaky Google does in the background, it should be good?

        Floris Board afaik has its own implementation of gesture typing, but that’s been stuck in beta without word suggestions, so it’s not really usable.

    • KroninJ@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      Thanks! The only thing I don’t like is that I can’t have arrow keys. It’s immediately better than SwiftKey for sure, so I’ll adjust.

      • WhoRoger@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        You can use swiping on the space bar to move left and right at least.

        AnySoftKeyboard has arrow keys and more gestures, but it’s not as refined overall imo.

        Floris Board has gestures to move around IIRC, but not at the same time as gesture typing, and is lacking word suggestions.

        • KroninJ@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          Awesome! Using space to go left and right is good enough for me!

          Thanks a ton for that. I got to really liking OpenBoard since I started using it.

    • Fox@pawb.socialEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      I’ve been using it for a couple weeks, and it’s a lot slower than gboard. No swiping support, suggestions aren’t as refined, and basically impossible to use one handed.

        • Fox@pawb.socialEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          The version I’m using (from f-droid repo) does not have swiping. You might have a fork? Someone mentioned that elsewhere in the comments, I was not aware it existed.

  • user@infosec.pubEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    F-Droid has a lot of security issues(if you care about security), use Neo Store if you want access to F-Droid apps with a more secure app.

    EDIT: Even better to use Obtainium and add the links of the APP’s own Github/GitLab repo to it.

    • argv_minus_one@beehaw.orgEnglish
      11·
      1 year ago

      A tempting idea would be to compare F-Droid to the desktop Linux model where users trust their distribution maintainers out-of-the-box (this can be sane if you’re already trusting the OS anyway), but the desktop platform is intrinsically chaotic and heterogeneous for better and for worse. It really shouldn’t be compared to the Android platform in any way.

      This is, quite frankly, borderline misinformation. Malicious packages in Linux distributions are unheard of. Malicious apps in the allegedly-more-secure Google Play, on the other hand, are a dime a dozen.

      The downplaying of the importance of reproducible builds further diminishes my opinion of this piece.

      I’m going to go ahead and continue using F-Droid, thanks.

      • user@infosec.pubEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        What exactly are you trying to point out ?

        From your quote: “It really shouldn’t be compared to the Android platform in any way.”

        And where exactly does it downplay reproducible builds ? “reproducible builds are not as common as we would have wanted.”

        “I’m going to go ahead and continue using F-Droid, thanks.” Good friend, do whatever it is you want to do.

        I’m just trying to spread security awareness.

        EDIT: “Saying Play Store is filled with malicious apps is beyond the point: the false sense of security is a real issue. Users should not think of the F-Droid main repository as free of malicious apps, yet unfortunately many are inclined to believe this.”

        • argv_minus_one@beehaw.orgEnglish
          1·
          11 months ago

          From your quote: “It really shouldn’t be compared to the Android platform in any way.”

          I quoted that because it’s part of the borderline misinformation. Security is security. Malware is malware. Android isn’t magical and neither is desktop Linux. They absolutely can be meaningfully compared.

          And where exactly does it downplay reproducible builds ? “reproducible builds are not as common as we would have wanted.”

          Ah, you’re right. I misread that part, sorry.

          I’m just trying to spread security awareness.

          So am I. I’m an ornery old Linux nerd and security snob. I’d excise all proprietary software from my home and office if I could, precisely because it has such an appalling track record and the blatantly unnecessary attack surfaces of DRM and telemetry.

          Can F-Droid be more secure than it is? Sure. Do the issues described in this paper mean F-Droid is so rampantly insecure that even Play is safer? Absolutely not.

          By the way, I’m not sure I understand how Neo Store is supposed to be more secure, as it’s supposedly just an alternative UI for F-Droid. As for Obtainium, it’ll protect you from malfeasance or compromise on the part of the F-Droid repository, but it won’t protect you from malicious app developers, and unless I’m mistaken, the latter is a much more common threat.

    • milicent_bystandr@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      I read through that article, and though I don’t have the time or knowledge to properly critique it, I found quite a lot of it unconvincing.

      It’s one thing to agree there are potential issues, but the article seemed to jump a bit too easily, via rhetoric more than logic, to “therefore it’s unsuitable” and similarly to “the other ones are better”.

      (Disclaimer: I only know mildly what I’m talking about!! If whoever reads this is interested, I hope you can follow the details to their source and get involved in the proper discussion for improving f-droid and/or encouraging another respiratory client.)

      • argv_minus_one@beehaw.orgEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        A tempting idea would be to compare F-Droid to the desktop Linux model where users trust their distribution maintainers out-of-the-box (this can be sane if you’re already trusting the OS anyway), but the desktop platform is intrinsically chaotic and heterogeneous for better and for worse. It really shouldn’t be compared to the Android platform in any way.

        This is, quite frankly, borderline misinformation. Malicious packages in Linux distributions are unheard of. Malicious apps in the allegedly-more-secure Google Play, on the other hand, are a dime a dozen.

        The downplaying of the importance of reproducible builds further diminishes my opinion of this piece.

        I’m going to go ahead and continue using F-Droid, thanks.

  • Rafael D Martins@lemmy.eco.brEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I dropped gboard and started using FlorisBoard. It’s a lot more crude and don’t have the same features, but I’m very happy with it and will not go back.

    I preffer my privacy over features, and using the software and reporting feedback helps it betting better.

    We really need to ditch Google.

  • AphoticDev@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    English
    1·
    1 year ago

    What do you mean, no competition? SwiftKey was the first to have swipe typing, and still does it best, because it learns how you swipe and adjusts itself for that.

      • SeaJ@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        I loved Swype. Nuance made it a pile of shit though. One annoying thing after they bought it was that ‘K.’ would always autocorrect to K. d. Lang. You could not tell it to stop doing that.

        I use SwiftKey now. Microsoft is getting more of my data.

    • DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.comEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      It’s only better for privacy. It’s definitely still behind in features.

      I’m going to partially take that back. I just realised I hadn’t added Florisboard Beta in my Obtainium after switching to a new phone. We now have suggestions! I miss gif searching but, meh, I can live without that.

      Edit: well, kinda. There’s a PR waiting to introduce “proper” suggestions. Right now in the beta, there’s a suggestions panel, but it doesn’t appear to be using the dictionary yet.