I switched from Android's default keyboard to an open source alternative to eliminate my constant typos

Published Aug 25, 2026, 12:15 PM EDT Oluwaniyi Raji is a tech content specialist who covers consumer technology, software, and digital tools. He has published over 300 articles for outlets including BGR (Boy Genius Report), MakeUseOf, TestGorilla, and Vervoe, focusing on helping readers make informed decisions about the technology they use. His work combines technical accuracy with practical buying advice. When he’s not writing, Oluwaniyi enjoys exploring new productivity tools and watching football. I have installed Gboard on every phone I have owned since my first Google Pixel. It came with the phone, it worked, and I never once opened its settings. However, my typo rate started increasing about a year ago. Most of it came up in group chats and quick replies, where nobody rereads anything, so I let it slide for months. But that stopped being an option when a bad correction made it into an important work email. I only discovered it when going through the email a day later. I wasn't the only one experiencing this issue, going by how much has been written about Gboard's declining autocorrect accuracy. So I decided to look for a replacement. Why I wanted the replacement to be open source Two problems that turned out to be one problem Credit: Lucas Gouveia / Android Police Accuracy was the first reason. The second was that Gboard is a keyboard made by an advertising company, and I hadn't thought about what this meant before. A keyboard sees everything you write. Gboard reports which app you are typing in, how long your words are, and how long you took to type them, and that data can be tied to your name. Restricting myself to open source gave me a small set of options, and that proved useful. An offline keyboard cannot send anything anywhere, and it also cannot rely on a server to guess what I meant. I tried Simple Keyboard and uninstalled it within a day. It is deliberately minimal and ships without autocorrect, so it solved nothing for me. AnySoftKeyboard lasted about a week. It has an enormous feature list, and I liked using it, but its word substitutions were wrong often enough that I stopped trusting the suggestion strip. I nearly resolved to only type important emails on my laptop, but then someone mentioned HeliBoard, which I had never heard of. What changed when I installed HeliBoard A familiar layout with a much shorter feature list HeliBoard is a maintained fork of OpenBoard, which was built on the AOSP keyboard. That ancestry is why I didn't need an adjustment period to go banging away on it. The layout, key spacing, and general feel were identical to what I had been typing on for years. I was at full speed within a day, after weeks of fighting unfamiliar layouts. The downside is that installing it takes a bit of effort. It isn't on the Play Store, so I downloaded it from F-Droid, and glide typing needs a closed source library you add yourself. I didn't bother with that library, since I have never liked swiping. Everything else was there, including themes, clipboard history, and multilingual typing. If you value your privacy, it's worth moving away from Gboard. Ever since I caught Google suggesting ads from something I typed (even though it claims not to), HeliBoard has never been more attractive. It corrects worse than Gboard, and that is the point Fewer guesses meant I started reading my own sentences HeliBoard gets its suggestions from local dictionaries, and they are not as good as Google's. That means I'm switching to what sounds like a worse keyboard. The difference is that Gboard reads the words surrounding a typo and uses that context to fix it, while HeliBoard mostly looks at the word sitting in front of it. On raw correction accuracy, Google wins hands-down. However, the benefit is that HeliBoard guesses less, and it never guesses confidently. It has never swapped a word I spelled correctly (or incorrectly) for its suggestion. In contrast, Gboard keeps insisting even when I type my preferred spelling repeatedly. It also replaces a word with something plausible, which means it's easy to skip it while glancing through before tapping send. Perhaps it's a skill issue, but that's the point. I don't want to have to learn something as simple as a keyboard. If Gboard continues to fall short year after year, that says more about the software than how I use it. A minimalist keyboard leaves me with fewer features to keep track of, unlike Gboard, which now runs several, like the Gemini-powered Rambler dictation tool. These days, I read the sentence instead of the suggestion strip. I'm even considering turning off predictive text, which would have sounded absurd to me last year. What this switch cost me Honestly, it's not a fair trade Credit: Lucas Gouveia / Android Police I lost contextual correction, and I notice it, especially when typing with one hand. When I mistype a word into another valid word, HeliBoard has nothing to catch it with, so I have to correct it myself. I also gave up the newer Gboard features. Rambler needs a Google Pixel 11 and an internet connection, and an offline app won't replicate that. Also, setting it up is not that straightforward if you're not used to F-Droid. And it might be a hard pass if you avoid any app store other than the official Play Store. The advantages of this keyboard outweigh these concerns for me. I've been frustrated with Gboard enough times that I'm willing to go further low-tech for a better experience. Someone who dictates constantly or writes in four languages would have different considerations. The keyboard I stopped thinking about The typos stopped, though not for the reason I expected when I went looking for a Gboard replacement. Moving to a keyboard that is worse at predicting me meant I stopped running my sentences through a bad predictor. Google's correction is still more capable, and anyone willing to dig through the Gboard settings most people never change can push it further. What I wanted was a keyboard that types what I press and then stays out of the way. HeliBoard is the first one in years that I could install, configure once, and forget about.