This thread is ONLY to talk about Keyboards, Notes, Maps and Music Players. I add video Music Players because probably some people want to know about good FOSS alternatives.
Little context
spoiler
Why not build a megathread with the best and most reliable FOSS apps too help someone who want to join on the bright side of open source?
We (because this is not from me, this is from us) need to share thoughts, ideas and all things you want to say. Dont be shy. Upvote the comments you like and agree; disagree and tell why you disagree. This is will be different from others threads because this need a proper user opinion, and your opinions will be VERY important to build this. In short, your opinions and thoughts will be the fundamental source to build this.
I will read ALL comments to build this. Even if this has a million comments, I’m going to waste time reading it. Whatever it takes.
Your opinions about it are CRUCIAL and FUNDAMENTAL, because your opinions is the main-base to build the megathread.
Please, consider share your ideas and thoughts about apps on previous threads. Your opinions are really important to build final megathread. You can upvote or downvote posts so that comments gain strength and agreement between the community.
Maps: Organic Maps
Notes: Note calendar. Type in notes for a specific day. A beautifully simple app.
Wildcard for keyboard: ThumbKey
This has been pretty great, although unique.
What’s the best alternative to Gboard?
I’ve gotten use to swiping to type, and the English (Australia) (PC) QWERTY layout with the number row at the top, and hold-press numbers are the equivalent QWERTY keyboard symbols.
Am finding it hard to replace.
Fcitx5 supports CJK
- Keyboard: OpenBoard (works great, support anonymous mode, my layout, emojis, paste, move cursor using finger over space button, longer deletes using finger over backspace)
- Music Player: Odyssey (I don’t rely on ID3 tags but directory structure instead - there is too little of those players who use it)
- Music Player: ViMusic (FOSS interface to Youtube Music)
- Music Player: RadioDroid (for online radio stations)
noteless . esp for collecting links/bookmarks
- Openboard
- Quillnote
- Organic Maps
- ViMusic - music streaming but after 1st listen songs are cached for offline play.
Edit: Now that I think about it, I use session for taking notes and “syncing” them with my PC. I guess any messaging app with a desktop client would work.
I’ve enjoyed anysoft and floris keyboards but I want something open source with gif support. Might go back to swiftkey just because of it.
Keyboard: FlorisBoard
Music Player: InnerTune
##Keyboards
Florisboard is back!
Openboard is sadly outdated, but there was some steady updated fork
Simple keyboard (NOT the simple tools), but it doesn’t have many fucntions, but works just great and looks on a million $
##Notes
Many good options, but i would like to see an gpg encrypted notes with local storage
Honorable mentions: logseq, simple notes
Maps
Gmaps WV (donate to divest, plz), organic maps
##Music
Everything that works with jellyfin, bauh was good, but not updated in a while
Notes: Joplin
Maps: OSMand, Organic Maps, StreetComplete, Vespucci, EveryDoor
Music: VLC
I yearn for the day a FOSS keyboard for Android will have functional multilingual autocorrect. Most of the typing I do on my phone is in Frenglish and every FOSS keyboard I’ve tried has made it impossible to have autocorrect turned on. They always default to autocorrecting in either only English or only French which is just very frustrating.
Compare that to SwiftKey, which not only has no issues with mixed languages, also learns my texting patterns, such as typing j’fais rather than je fais. I just don’t give it any permissions, including network access. It’s one of the only proprietary things on my phone but I couldn’t use my phone without it.
Have you tried this active fork of OpenBoard? The dev added support for multilingual typing months ago. This has Material You theme as well as glide typing (needs to be turned on manually).
I hate how good SwiftKey’s autocorrect is. I’m definitely on the hunt for a good alternative in this thread.
I’ve been using the OpenBoard fork since it got recommended in this thread and it’s been good enough for me to disable SwiftKey (not delete yet though, I’m not ready to fully commit to deleting that accrued personal dictionary). I recommend checking it out!
- Music player: “dialog music player” for filemanagers, Vanilla music if you want auto-play, anrimians player is nice too (github)
- maps: nothing beats OSMAnd
- Notes: personally markor, but if you want cross platform sync Standard Notes may be nice
- Keyboard: Florisboard forever, so stable and customizable. I cant like without the internal clipboard and quick deletion, and the editing buttons