Gboard safe to use with network permission revoked?
Gboard safe to use with network permission revoked?
for English i use heliboard. but i type in other languages also, and there are no practical choices in foss keyboards for those specific languages which also have the mainstream IME/key layout for my language (not qwerty).
fcitx provides some hope for the future but for now, it also doesn't have the IME/key layout for my language (only has qwerty). hopefully it can also have handwriting in the future somehow (if only via user-installed model/blob similar to heliboard glide typing).
anyway, I'm on Graphene OS. so i wondered if revoking network permission and setting gboard permanently to incognito (is permanent possible?) would suffice to cut off data collection?
edit: FYI the languages/key layouts i need are Japanese via 12-key flick and Cantonese via traditional Chinese handwriting input
Given GrapheneOS does not have privileged Google Services, revoking network permissions should completely stop any data from leaving GBoard.
On other ROMs with privileged Google Services this might not be the case, altough I don't expect it.
I think if you have play services installed then apps which want to talk to it still can (even with GrapheneOS sandboxing) even with network permission denied. I believe it's just how all apps behave (not a special play services privilege), but I can't remember if I read it on the GrapheneOS FAQ or just in some random comment.
I’d just as soon not use google apps, where possible.
I've been using FUTO Keyboard and I really want to like and support FOSS projects, but goddam is it maddening at times. I was just contemplating gboard with network access blocked on my pixel with graphene when I saw this in my feed.
HeliBoard is a good FOSS alternative to FUTO Keyboard
pasting my comment here too. It may help somebody :
i'm trilingual and i use AnySoftKeyboard ☞ https://github.com/AnySoftKeyboard/AnySoftKeyboard or https://github.com/AnySoftKeyboard/AnySoftKeyboard
it supports 58 languages. Did you try ASK?
That's what I've been doing. I use Futo as my regular keyboard, but Gboard for Japanese input. I did have to give it network access very briefly when I first installed it to let it download some dictionary/autocomplete. But working fine since I disabled network again after that.
Guys I use Futo keyboard too and my main problem is that I can't find dictionary files for auto correct in my language. Do you know any sources I can look at? Or I'm just out of luck