FUTO Keyboard, first impressions
I’ve been using FUTO keyboard since three days ago, I wanted to write about it since day one to consider it as a real first impressions, but I had no time for it.
Anyway, there are things I like and I don’t, but in general I could say it is good enough to consider using it as my daily keyboard for more days.
What I like
Let me start with what I like. It’s an open source project with a focus on privacy, and only for that I truly believe it’s worth to try it.
I don’t know you, but I’ve started to worry about my privacy online recently. I can’t believe how much data I give to Google and other companies just for the convenience they provide, but it’s something I don’t want to continue doing.
I’m trying out Nextcloud as a replacement for Google Drive, Immich for Google Photos, CoMaps for Google Maps, and some fossify apps such as gallery, calendar and voice recorder for the Android ones. Now, I’m trying to make FUTO keyboard my main keyboard, it’s part of my journey on moving away from big tech services, not because they are bad, but because I don’t trust them.
Being an open source project it’s another advantage, as you can be sure it does what it says it does. For example, it’s private and you can be sure of it.
But privacy is not everything I care right now. I’m a developer and I’m planning to contribute to the project on something I don’t like about it, the padding on the numbers. You could agree with me that the padding Gboard has is better.
If you’re not a developer and you find something you think can be improved, you can always talk to the developers or ask directly for a feature by opening an issue on its GitHub repository, trust me, it’s not difficult.
The predictive text is also good, not as good as the Gboard one in my opinion, but it’s good enough for me.
However, there’s a feature it’s missing on Gboard that is now fundamental for me, the navigation arrows. I use Obsidian to write a lot of different things, from my to-do list to the posts for my blog (just like this one), and I need the vertical navigation keys to navigate through a couple of plugins I use, that I previously was able to do only on my desktop.
About voice recording, this is the first time I use it, so I think it’s okay. However, I type on English and Spanish daily and I haven’t test it on Spanish yet. But English is working fine.
The last paragraph was using the voice recording feature, it’s something I don’t use often, but I liked the result.
The built-in clipboard manager is also great. I never used this feature on Gboard, so I can’t say how good or bad it is compared to it, but I can say it works fine and I think it’s something I’ll start using more frequently.
What I don’t like
I said predictive text is good, but at the same time it’s the feature I believe is causing more friction on my transition from Gboard. Maybe I just need to use it more time to be comfortable with it, but I have to be honest with you, this feature it’s really better on Gboard.
Another thing I didn’t like was the default size, I had to shrink it on the settings to match a similar size to the one I have on Gboard, but to be honest I don’t remember if I also modified it on Gboard. It’s something I didn’t like, but it could be consider good as you can customize it to your needs.
I already mentioned the padding on the numbers on the top row, it’s definitely something that doesn’t look good in my opinion. And if you enable the dedicated row for the numbers, well, I don’t like they don’t have the same appearance as the rest of the keyboard.
If you type on Spanish just like me, you could also find that the ¿ mark is not ergonomic to use. But again, as it’s an open source project and I hope I can try to propose a change for it.
Conclusion
If you’re doing a transition from big tech software to open source alternatives, I think FUTO keyboard is a good option. I find it stable enough even if they consider it in alpha state, so I’ll continue using it as my daily keyboard and I invite you to try it out.
This review was written with FUTO keyboard.