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  • Re: Curious what you use for offline keyboard/STT (speech to text) on A

    From Arno Welzel@3:633/10 to All on Tuesday, April 28, 2026 09:48:58
    Subject: Re: Curious what you use for offline keyboard/STT (speech to text) on Android

    Maria Sophia, 2026-04-28 02:58:

    I'm designing my own keyboard/STT setup for Android 13 where the options
    are overwhelming in complexity, even as marketing solutions do exist.

    To that end, it would be useful to know what other people use in terms of
    Q: What offline keyboard, if any, do you use on Android?

    GBoard - works offline as well, at least on a Google Pixel 6a.

    Another alternative is <https://voiceinput.futo.org>

    Q: What offline speech to text, if any, do you use on Android?

    Built on speech output - works offline as well, at least on a Google
    Pixel 6a.



    --
    Arno Welzel
    https://arnowelzel.de

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From AJL@3:633/10 to All on Wednesday, April 29, 2026 02:56:54
    Subject: Re: Curious what you use for offline keyboard/STT (speech to text) on Android

    On 4/28/26 6:34 PM, Maria Sophia wrote:

    I just invested a few hours into getting STT to work with Whisper and >HeliBoard (which is a port of OpenBoard) that I wish I had known about
    AJL's suggestion to use Futo/Whisper instead since it's more elegant.

    Not my suggestion. I don't have a clue what Futo/Whisper is. And my feet
    don't even talk much less whisper...



    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Richmond@3:633/10 to All on Wednesday, April 29, 2026 09:28:30
    Subject: Re: Curious what you use for offline keyboard/STT (speech to text) on Android

    Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> writes:

    AJL wrote:
    On 4/28/26 6:34 PM, Maria Sophia wrote:

    I just invested a few hours into getting STT to work with Whisper and >>>HeliBoard (which is a port of OpenBoard) that I wish I had known
    about AJL's suggestion to use Futo/Whisper instead since it's more >>>elegant.

    Not my suggestion. I don't have a clue what Futo/Whisper is. And my
    feet don't even talk much less whisper...

    Oh. It was Arno. My bad. Sorry for mixing you guys up.

    Anyway, I've got it all figured out, but it's as complicated as Google
    could possibly have made it.

    If I were to start over, I'd actually use Futo/Whisper.cpp, but since
    I already did it with Heliboard/WhisperIME, I'm gonna stick with this.

    It's working perfectly inside of PulseSMS and inside of WhatsApp which
    is mainly where I use voice to text. It works inside of Copilot too,
    but it's a few more button presses 'cuz Copilot's mic is desperate to
    send voice to Microsoft's cloud servers and when you use another mic,
    Copilot gets upset.

    Here are some screenshots of the working setup, but warning, it's
    complex! <https://i.postimg.cc/hjLR3wTH/whisper02.jpg>

    It's amazing, to me anyway, how super complicated keyboards are on
    Android. <https://i.postimg.cc/hvmzwKpf/whisper01.jpg>

    You'd never know it though, unless you tried to set up your own
    outside of Google/Samsung keyboards, although I suspect
    Futo/Whisper.cpp is easy.

    I use Futo with Amazon FireOS 8. Amazon for some reason decided to
    remove the speech to text from its keyboard, maybe to make people use
    Alexa, which isn't a solution.

    Although Futo is open source it asks for money from time to time, and
    the permissions keep getting reset. Also it does not display any text
    until the speech is finished and then all appears in one go. Apart from
    that it works well.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From AJL@3:633/10 to All on Wednesday, April 29, 2026 16:02:17
    Subject: Re: Curious what you use for offline keyboard/STT (speech to text) on Android

    On 4/29/26 1:28 AM, Richmond wrote:

    I use Futo with Amazon FireOS 8. Amazon for some reason decided to
    remove the speech to text from its keyboard, maybe to make people use
    Alexa, which isn't a solution.

    Perhaps another reason not to use Alexa: A quote from settings on the Fire
    tablet I'm posting with (also OS 8): "Alexa is a cloud-based voice service,
    Amazon processes and retains audio, interactions, and other data in the
    cloud to provide and improve our services".

    Fortunately there's an Alexa on-off switch. But I wonder if they're still
    listening... 8-O

    As posted earlier I covered this tablet's cameras and plugged its mike hole
    with fingernail polish. Also like someone else here, I just don't like
    talking to computers. Me paranoid? Nah...






    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)