Gboard

What hackers pick instead

• FUTO KeyboardRecommended as a private, offline Android keyboard with on-device voice typing and many tweakable options. Critics note it is source-available, not open source.51recommend
• FUTO SwipePeople recommend it as a free, privacy-respecting swipe keyboard that performs about as well as Gboard. Common caveats are limited language support and a confusing license.40recommend
• Microsoft SwiftKeyRecommended for multilingual typing, sync across devices and good swipe and autocomplete. The most common caveat is Microsoft account prompts and Bing ads.21recommend
• Keybee keyboardA phone keyboard layout built for faster typing, with open-source code. Critics doubt it beats QWERTY and say it lacks swipe typing and autocorrect.8recommend
• Thumb-KeyFree two-row, 16-key smartphone keyboard that people recommend for fast thumb typing, including on very small devices.6recommend

Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 114 comments. Each links to the original.

1. the amount of time GBoard thinks it needs to recommend @gmail.com, it's obnoxious... But the correction offers are still okay for me

   Mixed · Feb 2026 · in “Apple, fix my keyboard before the timer ends or I'm leaving iPhone”

2. I rely on Gboard every day for the simple reason that it auto-detects several (more than two) languages

   Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Apple, fix my keyboard before the timer ends or I'm leaving iPhone”

3. swipe typing on Gboard feels much better than FUTO's because I think it adapts to my typing style

   Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “FUTO Swipe – A new swipe typing model”

4. Works reasonably well. Accuracy is a bit lower for words that are collisions across languages

   Mixed · Jun 2026 · in “FUTO Swipe – A new swipe typing model”

5. It figures out what language I'm typing from the first couple of words and prioritises those.

   Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “FUTO Swipe – A new swipe typing model”

6. GBoard which is way better but the experience is not the same as with a default keyboard

   Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Apple, fix my keyboard before the timer ends or I'm leaving iPhone”

7. With gboard I can swipe type al 3 languages I speak without having to constantly switch

   Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “FUTO Swipe – A new swipe typing model”

8. Nothing else implements a prediction model over a number of words as far as I can tell.

   Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Keybee: A Keyboard Designed for Smartphones”

9. it's the only keyboard that just lets me type in two languages without having to

   Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “iPhone Typos? It's Not Just You – The iOS Keyboard Is Broken [video]”

10. Gboard is somehow still the best, the native android keyboard is hardly usable.

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Motorola phones have started hijacking the Amazon app to insert affiliate codes”

11. It's pretty old now and hasn't been updated in a long time, but it still works.

    Mixed · Jun 2026 · in “FUTO Swipe – A new swipe typing model”

12. Gboard can do that. I use 3 languages intertwined constantly so I need that.

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “GrapheneOS has been ported to Android 17 and official releases are coming soon”

13. Gboard has one nice feature though in that I have multiple languages enabled

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “FUTO Swipe – A new swipe typing model”

14. it didn't provide any word suggestions for ant language other than English

    Mixed · Jun 2026 · in “GrapheneOS has been ported to Android 17 and official releases are coming soon”

15. When I had iPhone for work, the first thing I did was install gboard.

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Apple, fix my keyboard before the timer ends or I'm leaving iPhone”

16. it's crazy how bad the Apple iOS keyboard is by comparison

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “iPhone Typos? It's Not Just You – The iOS Keyboard Is Broken [video]”

17. GBoard is so much better than the default iphone keybaord.

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “iPhone Typos? It's Not Just You – The iOS Keyboard Is Broken [video]”

18. I can touch-type with flow typing in GBoard at this point.

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Keybee: A Keyboard Designed for Smartphones”

19. I find GBoard to remain superior in multilingual typing

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Motorola phones have started hijacking the Amazon app to insert affiliate codes”

20. gets it right 95 % of the time even if I type gibberish

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux”

21. Can't stand the Apple iOS keyboard for some reason.

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “iPhone Typos? It's Not Just You – The iOS Keyboard Is Broken [video]”

22. Autocorrect and spellcheck, not just on Android but other Google products, will change correct danish to incorrect danish.

    Criticizes · Dec 2025 · in “iPhone Typos? It's Not Just You – The iOS Keyboard Is Broken [video]”

23. Suggests words that make no sense, preferring rare words to much more widely used and obvious matching picks.

    Criticizes · Dec 2025 · in “iPhone Typos? It's Not Just You – The iOS Keyboard Is Broken [video]”

24. it doesn't know basic declensions in Czech nor Polish and autocorrects them to something nonsensical

    Criticizes · Dec 2025 · in “iPhone Typos? It's Not Just You – The iOS Keyboard Is Broken [video]”

25. avoiding a Google product that keep a trail of everything you type seems like a strong argument

    Criticizes · Feb 2026 · in “Apple, fix my keyboard before the timer ends or I'm leaving iPhone”

26. Gboard hasn't been updated in 4 years and as a result the UI doesn't always display properly.

    Criticizes · Feb 2026 · in “Apple, fix my keyboard before the timer ends or I'm leaving iPhone”

27. ive turned off my gboards settings for auto caps cause it made i I which pisses me lff

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “I spent 5 years how to code .made real projects only to be called AI slop?”

28. it's not safe to install things like Gboard even with the network permission disabled

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “GrapheneOS Overhauled Default Apps and Secure Clipboard”

29. GBoard's dictionaries for Czech and Polish are still missing many usual declensions

    Criticizes · Jun 2026 · in “Anthropic, please ship an official Claude Desktop for Linux”

30. I find the default keyboard (GBoard) atrocious for languages other than English.

    Criticizes · Dec 2025 · in “iPhone Typos? It's Not Just You – The iOS Keyboard Is Broken [video]”

31. The one third-party keyboard that seems to work is the one from Google, if you want a better experience than Apple’s.

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Search engines alternatives now that Google isn't Google anymore”

32. Gboard's own swipe to type is decent but missing a lot of those features that made swype so much better

    Mixed · Jun 2026 · in “FUTO Swipe – A new swipe typing model”

33. GBoard crashed often but was very good and had the wonderful built-in calculator

    Mixed · Jun 2026 · in “FUTO Swipe – A new swipe typing model”

34. i ended up just using gboard on gos because every other one i tried fell short

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “GrapheneOS Overhauled Default Apps and Secure Clipboard”

35. the space bar trackpad feature works way better than on native keyboard

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Bugs Apple Loves”

36. If you do not like native keyboard, install 3rd party one like Gboard.

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Apple, fix my keyboard before the timer ends or I'm leaving iPhone”

37. There's really no good open source alternative that even comes close.

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Motorola phones have started hijacking the Amazon app to insert affiliate codes”

38. has improved greatly lately. Now it does almost understand Finnglish

    Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “Whistle: Speech to Text in 16.9 MB”

39. it crashed in too many apps and I had to switch to the Apple one

    Mixed · Dec 2025 · in “iPhone Typos? It's Not Just You – The iOS Keyboard Is Broken [video]”

40. open-source keyboard that has the same clean usability as Gboard

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Kiss Launcher – fast launcher for Android”