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New FUTO Keyboard FOSS swipe library now available
artyomhttps://github.com/futo-org/android-keyboard/releases/tag/0.1.29
We have completely overhauled swipe typing to introduce FUTO Swipe, our new swipe typing system that achieves leading accuracy.
This has been a long project in the making, starting with our dataset effort back in late 2024, where thanks to your contributions we built a dataset of 1 million swipes on QWERTY English. It’s thanks to this dataset that we’ve been able to make absolute accuracy evaluations, do various experiments, and develop the system we are releasing with this update.
How accurate is it? In my opinion, a good measure is to look at the error rate (1.0 - accuracy), rather than just accuracy, since it becomes difficult to grasp the numbers that are mostly over >90%. So here are the error rates for a few relevant keyboards, tested on our public test set (filtered to first 20k non-single-letter swipes) in-emulator. A lower number is better, because it means fewer errors. Top-1 error is the rate at which the primary word was incorrect, and top-4 error is when neither of the 3 alternatives were correct either.
FUTO Swipe Gboard iOS Heliboard w/ Google library Old
Top-1 error 7.38% 11.05% 10.82% 13.12% ~34%
Top-4 error 4.19% 5.66% 7.14% 7.63% ~27%
That’s right, we are not matching the big keyboards on this benchmark but rather exceeding them, achieving 26% fewer errors relative to Gboard! Hopefully, swipe typing accuracy will no longer be an issue for you on FUTO Keyboard.
The suggestion bar will now show 3 alternatives after you finish swiping. This is so that you can make full use of the top-4 accuracy (1 accepted word + 3 alternatives). If you prefer the old behavior of showing the accepted word in middle, you can change this in settings. There, you can also find options to change the spacebar and backspace gestures, including disabling the spacebar cursor movement.
We will be working on more evaluations and improvements as we work on a paper, and we welcome feedback about specific cases where the new swipe system is lacking.
In the meantime, FUTO Swipe is also released for you to use in your own open-source projects! We recognize that this technology has been locked behind proprietary and closed-source walls for far too long. To learn more, check out https://swipe.futo.tech/
Emoji compatibility
We added Unicode 17 emoji, and reworked the emoji menu a bit. For a while, you may have experienced missing emoji in the emoji menu if you’re on an older Android version - this is because we depended on the system font to provide emoji, and if an emoji was from a newer Unicode version that wasn’t supported on your system, then it wouldn’t be displayed.
On Android, the typical workaround for this is to use an emoji compatibility library called emoji2, but unfortunately the default implementation requires internet access to dynamically download fonts for missing emoji on the system, which is unacceptable for us as an offline keyboard app. Emoji2 provides a bundled library as an alternative, but this would add a shocking 9MB to the app just to support a handful of emojis on some older devices!
It appears that many of the emojis they bundle are unnecessary, so this new update includes a significantly trimmed compatibility font at only 1MB. Now, you should be able to insert from FUTO Keyboard, even if you’re on Android 7. You may still see tofu rendered by apps - unfortunately this is beyond our control and is on application developers to fix.
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Anybody used both this and HeliBoard and have any opinions?
So far this is way better, as their data suggests.
Yeah, I just was hoping for some personal experience. I’ll test it myself for a while and provide an update. Either here or a new post.
Yeah, I’m currently swapping between them on my phone while casually chatting. Been using heliboard for a few months now on it since Swype isn’t installable without rooting, and I ain’t rooting graphene.
Futo is way better at pattern recognition. It’s 95% as accurate as swype is for me, and that’s with the layouts being different enough that I’m not at my best.
Heliboard is maybe 75% as accurate, though still better than gboard itself (again, for me)
Heliboard has the advantage of being able to change the long press character options, though being real that didn’t help my accuracy much when doing markdown, as the dimensions between it and Swype are different as well.
Futo’s long press options are kinda weird, compared to anything else I’ve used, like the \ and / being on not just different keys, but on opposite ends of the layout. Heliboard’s defaults are better arranged.
All that being said, I’m typing more and correcting less with futo, and that’s a big deal imo.
I think I’ll end up switching to it unless the devs pull some fuckery
I’m actually finding it almost as good as Swiftkey, which is my hands down favorite.
Heliboard is better than FUTO IMO. Haven’t tried the new library, but I have no interest in going back to FUTO.
So you’re really just gonna say Heliboard is better even though you haven’t tried it…
Well, I’m trying it out. My main keyboard is swype, and nothing has ever matched it in terms of accurately picking up what I’mtryingto type compared to what sloppy swiping I’m really doing.
Heliboard is better than Gboard, but has never touched the accuracy of swype at all. Gboard is *okay *, but has too many issues being Google. FUTO previously was just bad. But this has all been typed on FUTO and f only has to delete an entry twice, with that f a few words ago being the first true typo (until i tried typo, which needs a little extra pause on the y to work right.
Could stand for some ability to fully change the layout, as i ahave took (have a ton) of memory built up with where the enter is vs the baggage (backspace)
But fuck me, it’s so far working at least as good as heliboard, though with some little quirks of its own.
If you look the the stuff in parentheses, that’s owhat (what i) was trying to type, with the section before being what came out. A few times, there were suggestions that don’t even get close to what i was trying to tout (like that was supposed to be type, but it didn’t come up as an option).
Ngl, ima play with settings and see if there’s options to change layouts. If there is, i just found a solid pick to replace swype as it becomes impossible to install or use. It’s almost as good, and ifi can tweak it to reduce the damn learning curve of the layout, I’ll be happy as hell.
If not, it’ll go on the back burner to practice with for a while until i get used to the layout.
Legit though, I’m impressed
Oh boy, FUTO is really committed in adding terms and conditions to everything. I wonder if a contract applies, since copyright on AI models is a bit questionable.
Got to give it a try, though. Swipe typing would be nice to have 😅
Edit: A bit of extra work to set up German language, and half the documentation pages are still missing, but the keyboard works like a charm.
You can Swype with heliboard. But not out of the box unfortunately.
Yeah, it’a been a while, but last time I tried swipe typing with Heliboard, it wasn’t good. I forgot what my issue was, but I ended up uninstalling it after a few days. But sometimes I have weird issues. Maybe I wasn’t okay with multilanguage support. Or I forgot to switch languages, could be my fault.
Yes your mileage might vary with it. For myself I’ve been getting by with it okay. When I found out the situation with the Futo stuff I took all of it off all my devices as a personal decision.
Sure. I just installed the Keyboard. I’ll try it for a few days. But yeah. Usually I try to stick to Free Software, so there’s a good chance I’m gonna remove it from my device again. Unless they manage too get me hooked on swipe typing 😅 But I think Heliboard also uses a closed-source library for swipe typing.
It did I think they were working on changing that. But yes currently. However they at least aren’t deceptive, manipulative or lying. Honestly I’m not even a free software purist. I prefer it whenever possible of course. But when something just works for its purpose I will absolutely use that as well. If it wasn’t for futo’s willing association with yarvin and the lying. Not going to lie the voice input was pretty decent and I was using it for a while. And I’m sure a lot of people still are. Just personally too much ick for me.
Thanks, I forgot about that 😟
BTW, there’s other voice input apps. I changed phones since I last tried but there were other good ones which were more responsive than FUTO’s software. My F-Droid shows Sayboard, Outspoke (via IzzyOnDroid’s Repo) and Whisper+
What T&C are you referring to?
The “license” for the swipe typing models. That’s what the link references. FUTO already has their own source-available license for software. And seems now they created one for AI models as well: https://huggingface.co/futo-org/futo-swipe/blob/main/LICENSE.md
That’s interesting, because they say in the video that it’s available under MIT license
https://peertube.futo.org/w/gWLaFZoAnrhmCSeTpzX65F?start=56s
Interesting indeed. Their dataset is under MIT license. Their resulting models under a special license.
And I have no clue if there’s code available to customize it, train or fine-tune the models. And what license that would entail.
They often do “interesting” stuff with licensing. Pretty much since the beginning of FUTO. I’d also question the choice of wording in the MIT license. Swipe patterns aren’t exactly “software”. And I wonder if their community knew they were releasing their contributions under some license. I can’t find any paragraph detailing it on the current data contribution page.
Just a bit of a shame how they always frame it in their public relations. Of course they talk about the MIT license in their videos. They seem to known that’s good PR. But they casually drop all the rest and don’t talk about the license of what they did. Or if it’s even actually possible to adapt it to other projects, given that requires some additional code and not just the dataset or weights.
The repo isnt MIT
https://github.com/futo-org/android-keyboard/blob/master/LICENSE.md
So they might have licensed one part as MIT, but not everything. Its still their ‘source available’
Yeah, as I said, they love licenses. Their code is FUTO Source First License 1.kb(?). Their models FUTO Model Weights License 1.0. The dataset MIT and seems the training code is proprietary. That’s 4 differently licensed parts that go into one product.
Thats not what their repo is licensed as, so I don’t really believe the video.
Holy shit it supports two finger Swipe! Holy shit!
Holy shit! Two finger swiping! KeyMonk-style is back, but foss!
When will it be available on FDroid?
It’s source-available, not FOSS. I don’t think it meets the inclusion requirements for F-Droid.
FUTO run their own F-Droid repo because of that: https://app.futo.org/fdroid/repo/
Yep read the announcement and immediately doubted it. And they’ve done it enough at this point that it’s not an honest mistake. It’s just blatant dishonesty.
I’m Not mad at source available as long as it is actually available and not “we’ll get around to making it available some day”
I can’t remember who it was that pulled that shit, but it made me dubious of the term for a while
Ah. That’s a bummer.
Edit. Tried anyway. SA is still better than Gboard (even firewalled). Swipe worked all but two hours, and promptly failed. The swipe action still works on the keyboard, but will not write text on the input. Cool while it lasted, but a keyboard needs to input longer than two hours. I’m still going to keep testing it. I like it better than Gboard, even without the swipe working properly.