# FUTO Keyboard 51 Hacker News commenters recommended FUTO Keyboard and 22 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 1 years (4 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** Recommended as a private, offline Android keyboard with on-device voice typing and many tweakable options. Critics note it is source-available, not open source. ## Why people recommend it - Strong on-device voice transcription (7 comments): "FUTO has a superb Android keyboard with on-device voice transcription using a fine-tuned Whisper model" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48005704)) "runs entirely on-device and has extremely good STT accurary, especially with the 70M parameter model" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50009323)) "Their local voice transcription is top notch and proper swipe gestures would be icing on the cake." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48651807)) - Good alternative to Gboard (5 comments): "some people use Android and also remove Google from the equation, so finding an alternative for Gboard is valuable to them. I'm one of them and I really like Futo." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47052552)) "FUTO finally provided a good text prediction/correction pair + that simply better feeling the Gboard has" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48279516)) "the first android keyboard i've used that I don't feel like i'm compromising vs GBoard" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48651014)) - Offline and private by design (4 comments): "runs entirely on-device and has extremely good STT accurary, especially with the 70M parameter model" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50009323)) "All offline, customizable design, good speech recognition, tolerable swipe typing." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47256982)) "futo is running whisper to transcript and it is local only" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49599487)) - Swipe typing good enough (4 comments): "on most keyboards the swipe functionality is much worse than GBoard but this one seems to work pretty well" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48279930)) "The swipe-to-type isn't as good as SwiftKey or Swype (RIP) but it's good enough for daily use." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46090700)) "All offline, customizable design, good speech recognition, tolerable swipe typing." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47256982)) ## What people warn about - Source-available, not open source (5 comments): "FUTO not being FOSS means that the community cannot fork and maintain the keyboard in case of a rug pull" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47256986)) "Commercial use doesn't only mean payment. If you modify FUTO, you can't use it at work for example." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47262696)) "Futo only produces source-available proprietary software. They most certainly are not Open Source" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50009620)) - Switches languages poorly (3 comments): "the big problem I have with futo key board is that it can only do one language at a time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48654248)) "futo just can't seem to be able to switch to other languages consistently" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48282523)) "it can't swipe type in multiple languages without switching every time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48564924)) - Swipe typing trails rivals (2 comments): "The swipe-to-type isn't as good as SwiftKey or Swype (RIP) but it's good enough for daily use." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46090700)) "It's good but unfortunately doesn't support the same swipe features of fleksy." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47117728)) - Voice recognition development stalled (2 comments): "They are just shipping the same whisper-small that everyone else is using, and did not much to improve their models since release." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46902950)) "It seems like work on voice recognition has halted entirely though." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49601369)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Gboard](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gboard.md): 59 recommend - [FUTO Swipe](https://hackerapproved.com/p/futo-swipe.md): 40 recommend - [Microsoft SwiftKey](https://hackerapproved.com/p/swiftkey.md): 21 recommend - [Keybee keyboard](https://hackerapproved.com/p/keybee.md): 8 recommend - [Thumb-Key](https://hackerapproved.com/p/thumb-key.md): 6 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "FUTO Keyboard", https://hackerapproved.com/p/futo-keyboard/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).