I want to turn it off entirely, but the “smart” hitboxes for the digital keyboard are also so imprecise that I rely on autocorrect to accommodate my fat fingers.
Gboard is especially bad at this. If a word could in any conceivable way be capitalized, it will capitalize it.
Mine constantly pulls the bait and switch when I try to type “definitely”. On the third letter, it will momentarily recommend “definitely”, but after an instant, say, long enough to decide to tap the suggestion, it switches it to “Def”, and because I tapped the suggestion, I have to go back and delete the whole word and start over
That def sounds annoying
Defiantly
With that, the Germans will have finally won /s
How do they decide Which of the words to Capitalize? Are there words that are the same words with different capitalization and they’re different words?
Nouns
Generally if you can put an article in front of it you capitalise it
AnySoftKeyboard (which I prefer over Gboard because privacy and Free Software) is even worse at aggressively capitalizing.
Soon the globalists will lay claim to every word and we’ll communicate with sentences composed 100% of proper noun brand-names owned by multinational corporations.
It always capitalizes Internet for me
They also tend to believe compound words don’t exist.
“Autocorrect,” for instance.
I’m using the Samsung one. I’ve tried a couple FOSS keyboards, but I just can’t get used to them. They always make it super hard to find the special characters or non-English letters like ñ, which is a PITA since half my family speaks Spanish.
I can’t stand the Samsung one because it doesn’t let me swear. I’m an adult, damnit. I want to be able to say what I want without my phone policing me like a child. So I use Gboard instead.
Hmmm I don’t seem to be having this problem, but I remember it happening at one time. I think I’ve manually added all the fucks and shits by now.
That’s the thing, I can’t even manually add them. I searched all over the web, but wasn’t able to find a solution. I think in older versions of the Samsung keyboard, you were able to do this. But newer phones or newer versions of the keyboard or something removed this feature. It’s dumb.
This is my second Samsung phone, so maybe my settings carried over? I agree that it’s dumb though. Samsung just seems to get worse over time.
Same with Apple. Ducking nuts!
Also doesn’t suggest “assassinate” and all of its forms except “assassin(s)”
I’m using OpenBoard. I have many complaints, but finding ñ is not one of them.
I think I’ve tried it, but I’ll give it another chance.
Edit: I remember now why I can’t use this one. It undoes autocorrect when I hit backspace, which is something I frequently do while typing. There’s a feature request on github, but so far no way to disable this behavior. It’s too bad because I like the layout and feel even more, but I can’t get used to this.
have you tried the updated fork? That’s what I use. https://github.com/Helium314/openboard
No, I haven’t! Does backspace undo autocorrect though? That is the only reason I haven’t been able to use openboard.
oh, it does. You could submit an issue though
Thanks, I’ll submit one and see what happens!
I’m not sure what you mean
I like Gboard because of its Hungarian layout, I have all the special letters like é and ö at my fingertips and I don’t have to long-press to type them.
I once out of curiosity checked the Spanish layout, it had ñ there.
Yes, the keyboard I use has the Spanish characters in the layout as well. In fact, it would probably make more sense just to use it if I could get used to the different layout.
My keyboard (Swiftkey) gets very excited about the possibilities when I start to hyphenate words to create compounds. It accepts that they exist, but it starts trying to throw all sorts of random suggestions in for what the second word could be (and it rarely gets the right word).
When you put it like that, it sounds very endearing 😄
How are you liking it otherwise? I’m looking for something that’s neither Gboard nor the Samsung one…
Used to be good. Still use it, but it seems to get worse every update
When is it correct to use compound words in english? In Swedish you can do compound words for anything at will. In English “flagpole” is its own word but “dirt farmer” isn’t.
There is no rule. It’s just chaos. The dictionaries can’t even agree.
True there is no consistent rule, but generally the more a phrase is used, the more often it becomes a compound word
Welp! Better go convince some more people to become destitute agricultural workers so that the dictionary is less confusing to us Scandinavians!
All it is is whether a compound word is common enough.
It starts in speech when the words are repeated next to each other often enough they start being thought of as one word. But can’t be shortened.
If, in context, every time we said farmer we ended up saying dirt farmer. It would become compound. But in reality we’d just end up saying “farmer” when the context makes it clear. You’ll see this in writing about farming all the time, initially stating the type of farmer then just saying farmer.
Flag pole started out separately, but in some conversations it would become one object. Every time we talked about the flag pole it would be one word, flagpole. But saying just “pole” would be ambiguous. There are other poles around.
It trends towards shortness, if context allows us to drop a word altogether we will, if it doesn’t it gets compounded abbreviated.
No formal rule for this at all, but that’s the way it happens. People try to say things more efficiently without confusing meaning.
Even more baffling, lots of keyboards don’t support this for German that has a bunch of compound words. Swiftkey (at least in the past) even split up compound words is German, thereby messing up correct grammar and replacing it with wrong grammar. It was infuriating.
Every few months I have to reset my dictionary. My phone will eventually decide that because I mostly use the words “hope” and “will” at the beginning of sentences, the correct spelling must be capitalized. Drives me nuts
Maybe it thinks you have two friends named Hope and Will
Turn off autocorrect. I hope that will help.
Long press on the wrong suggestion usually gives you an option to delete it from the dictionary.
True, but it’s not like lower-case “expanse” is an unusual word. Any decent dictionary would know this.
It’s more that your phone has one accidentally registered you typing it capitalized and remembered it as a “name”, deleting that suggestion allows it to reverts to the non-capitalized version.
This is just one of many examples. If it’s remembering a common English word like “expanse” as a name, then that’s crappy design. If you check my other comments in this thread, you will find more examples of autocorrect fucking up.
Either way, it fits here. It’s definitely infuriating when trying to express yourself in text, and perfectly normal words keep changing. And it’s gotten noticeably worse, the “smarter” these apps try to be. Autocorrect on my Motorola Droid from a decade ago worked much better than the one on the Samsung phone I’m using now, because it didn’t try to do the thinking part for me.
Thanks to this thread I have discovered openboard.
I really wish that I could use it. I try to use open source as much as I can, but the way it uses backspace to undo autocorrect is a big problem for me.
I should look into some other FOSS keyboards, though.
I really tried to like openboard but the way it hides the % key and the location of the / key drove me back to gboard
My phone does the opposite with lol. It refuses to capitalize it. lol.
I have a feeling mine did the same at one time. “The Expanse” was the topic of discussion in a discord server I’m in for a while, and I’m sure at that point I was forced to add the capitalized version so my phone would allow it. Instead of creating a separate entry so that both the capitalized and lower-case versions would be permitted, it must have “learned” that the word should always be capitalized, which is a mind-numbingly ineffectual way to do things.
I’ve now added “expanse” to the dictionary, so let’s see: You should watch “The Expanse.”
It works now, both ways! I know there are other perfectly normal words in keeps insisting are wrong though, and I’ll only be able to fix them in the moment when I’m trying to express myself quickly. Oh, it used to capitalize “express” every time too because I once texted a friend from inside an Express store. Absolutely bonkers.
what does the checkmark do then
i just turbed that stuff off i let me jeyvoard rip rawww
Your butchered comment made me chuckle
Adds it to the dictionary
ah okay then, thank you for clarifying
The frustrating part is I think that’s how this happened in the first place. I was discussing the show and must have added the capitalized word, and instead of just adding an entry, the app assumed I wanted to overwrite the normal form of “expanse.” It’s a pretty common English word, so I can’t imagine it wasn’t in there to begin with.
Don’t even worry about it. It’s only two or three taps to close the dialog box ad confirm that you wanted to close the dialog box. And it never happens more than once per word, I think.
I think you’re missing the infuriating part. I deliberately expanded the dialog box to demonstrate that lower-case “expanse” did not exist in the dictionary. The dictionary had “learned” that “expanse” is solely a proper noun. That’s the mildly infuriating part.
Just install a different keyboard?
Do you have a recommendation for one that’s better? I tried OpenBoard, but it’s even more infuriating to me.
Last time I used autocorrect or whatever they call it nowadays was on a Siemens or SonyEricsson phone, and it was called T9.
On modern big screen phones I can type easily with my average size male thumbs. Is it a common problem nowadays, or is it just lazyness or it’s just quicker to type this way? On early 3-4" smartphones I can understand, but on today’s 6-7" screens?
Especially with swipe typing - the only times I find I’m typing in a whole word is if swipe typing repeatedly doesn’t get it (eg have when I’m trying to type gave), or when I’m typing a word that isn’t in the dictionary. That means the vast majority of the time autocorrect would kick in it would be unwelcome anyway
Never used swipe typing.
I can’t speak to anyone else’s experience, but the hit boxes on every keyboard I’ve ever tried on this device have been absolute dogshit. In that previous sentence, I needed many corrections, and I fought with autocorrect deciding “tried” should be “tries.” My post is just one of many examples of autocorrect being wrong, but typing without autocorrect is worse.
I don’t know what to tell you. If anything, these keyboards have gotten worse for me, not better. The tinfoil hat part of me thinks I’m actually hitting the right spots, but the keyboard is trying to predict which letters I’ll type next.
There it was again – changing “but” to “buy .” It’s baffling to me how this is somehow much worse than the keyboard on my Motorola Droid from like 10 years ago.
