I bounced between the best Android keyboards for years, hunting for the perfect one. A flaw in the previous keyboard prompted each switch. Either it froze mid-swipe on my older phone, or I had to decline the autocorrect suggestions too often. After those trials, I settled on the keyboard that solved my issues. I’ll reveal it later. Let’s first examine the keyboards I tried and why they didn’t stick.
Why finding a good keyboard is harder than it should be
Most Android keyboards hinder typing. Lag or stuttering occurs on older devices and in heavy apps. Autocorrect often replaces words incorrectly (ducking instead of the intended term). Customization remains limited. Many stock keyboards don’t let you adjust key height or add a number row.
Multilingual support is weak. They lack clipboard managers and macro support and won’t let you pin copied items or create text shortcuts, making snippet reuse tedious. Swipe-typing accuracy varies wildly. These issues made finding the right keyboard a lengthy process.
What each keyboard got wrong for me
Over the years, I cycled through the usual suspects. Here’s a quick rundown of each, and why it never quite stuck.
SwiftKey was great until it wasn’t
SwiftKey impresses me with its smart predictions. It learned my slang, picked up my emoji habits, and delivered solid typing accuracy. Also, it simplifies access to punctuation by displaying only the common marks when I hold the period key.
However, over time, the app started to slow down. It became bloated, needed frequent cache clearing, and occasionally froze for a split second mid-sentence. That pushed me to look for lighter alternatives.
Fleksy showed promise but lacked support
I used Fleksy for quite a while and enjoyed it. It’s impressively fast. So much so that it holds the Guinness World Record for the fastest touchscreen typing.
Over time, the cracks started to show. The app hasn’t been well-maintained, and the lack of updates has taken a toll. Bugs began piling up. Finding the right emoji became frustrating, and when typing in landscape mode, the keyboard was cut off by the home bar. It felt like the app was slowly falling apart.
I left Grammarly over data worries
I was intrigued by Grammarly and its promise of real-time grammar checks, so I gave it a shot. The red underlines caught my mistakes. However, privacy became a concern. Grammarly’s privacy policy confirms that it collects user data.
I’m not saying the big tech giants don’t collect data, but they’re large, established companies with broader accountability. This made me uneasy about sharing sensitive data, so I uninstalled it.
HeliBoard was private, but needed tinkering
I then tried HeliBoard, a privacy-focused open source keyboard that runs offline. It offers deep customization with support for themes, layouts, and custom dictionaries, which makes it a good fit for power users. However, getting it to work takes time and tinkering.
It’s unavailable on the Play Store, so I downloaded the APK from F-Droid. Setting it up involved loading a swipe library to use gesture typing. Along the way, I ran into a few bugs. The emoji library didn’t load correctly, and the toolbar occasionally vanished. On top of that, voice typing and clipboard management weren’t reliable.
Gboard gave me everything I was looking for
After all that switching, I tried Google’s keyboard and have not looked back. Gboard delivers solid swipe-typing accuracy, getting it right almost every time. Its gestures feel fluid, and autocorrect fixes only what needs fixing. Over time, it learned my spelling habits so well that misspellings appear correctly with minimal effort.
It opens instantly, responds to every key press without delay, and rarely freezes. Loading custom themes, stickers, or GIFs does not slow it down. One of my favorite features is the built-in undo button, which allows me to quickly correct mistakes without fumbling through text.
Gboard excels at personalization. You can switch to custom themes and adjust the keyboard size. It offers an always-on number row. Privacy settings are also solid. Gboard runs entirely offline for typing and voice input. I know there’s some level of data logging, but with offline mode and no mandatory syncing, I feel I’m not giving up too much. For me, the trade-off is worth it.
Gboard also includes features like Emoji Kitchen that make typing fun. Built-in emoji and GIF search display related images when you type. You can pin frequently used snippets to keep them available. The little things like that make Gboard the keyboard I stuck with.
This is the keyboard I’m sticking with
Gboard solved the puzzle. I use a fast and accurate keyboard packed with a clipboard, emojis, and AI-assisted suggestions that I can configure how I want. Typing is effortless and enjoyable. Gboard works without errors or missing features. After years of trying the default keyboard apps, I’m done searching. Gboard works reliably, so I’ll keep it as my default keyboard.
