• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Which On-Screen Keyboard do you Use?

I was hoping for more than the names of the keyboards you folks used. I was hoping for your reasons for using one keyboard over another.
 
You never asked that in your OP. :p

Perhaps you could start the ball rolling and tell the forum which keyboard you're using, and your reasons for using it.
I like the Yandex keyboard, with the "Special characters" and "Editor panel" settings enabled. The editor panel gives you arrow keys to move the cursor, like on a physical keyboard. The special characters setting lets you see and use special characters, by right-clicking (i.e. tapping-and-holding) one of the keys.

Also because Yandex is the European equivalent of Google, yet it's almost unknown outside of eastern Europe. I'd like to see Yandex become far more popular, so that Google and Yandex complete, and the competition encourages them to make better products. In other words: A more popular Yandex might give Google a good kick-in-the-rear to get them innovating and improving their products.
 
Last edited:
Mainly Swiftkey, which I adopted back when it was an independent app. Now that Microsoft own it I don't allow any data sharing with them (I also turn this off in GBoard, though I rarely use that. The fact that Samsung keyboard doesn't have an obvious control for that is a point against it).

I'm wary of Yandex because I doubt that any Russian company can become that big, and they very are big in Russia, without compromising with the regime. That's not some anti-Russian prejudice, I have Russian friends and colleagues, have worked with Russians for many years, and am very much not a nationalist, but it seems to me that Yandex being in a similar line to Google et al means that all of the concerns you might have about data access and use must apply to them too, but with the extra drawback of them having to operate subject to that regime as well.
 
Last edited:
but with the extra drawback of them having to operate subject to that regime as well.
That's only an extra drawback if you're Russian. If you're American, then it's better for Yandex to have that data then Google, because Russia's government is less interested in your data then your own country's government. Of course, what's best is for our data to be out of corporate and government hands.
 
I agree about taking the corporates out of the picture (I regard them as a bigger problem that governments, at least where there is a functioning democracy, because they are less accountable). But I don't know that I'd assume that the Russian government automatically has no interest in your data: they may not be able to throw you in jail for calling a war a war, but to pick the first example that comes to mind they and their proxies (e.g. the Wagner group) have been behind disinformation campaigns of various sorts, and might find Americans' data useful in targetting such things.
 
But I don't know that I'd assume that the Russian government automatically has no interest in your data
I said "less interested", not "automatically has no interest".
they may not be able to throw you in jail for calling a war a war
Hence why it's better for your data to be in a foreign government's hands than your own government's. Your own government has far more power to abuse that data than a foreign government!
 
I said "less interested", not "automatically has no interest".

Hence why it's better for your data to be in a foreign government's hands than your own government's. Your own government has far more power to abuse that data than a foreign government!
I'm not sure that a government with a record of serious abuse is necessarily a good choice.
 
Back
Top Bottom