AnySoftKeyboard

AnySoftKeyboard, often shortened to ASK, is a free, open-source keyboard for Android, on F-Droid since 2012. Its developers put privacy first and call it one of the most customizable keyboards around.

What it does

From the project’s feature lists:

• Suggestions from dictionaries for many languages and from your contacts’ names, plus next-word prediction that learns how you type.
• Incognito mode, in which it learns no new words and keeps no history of what you type, emoji included.
• Gestures: swipe left or right to change layout, up for Shift, down to close the keyboard. Gesture typing, where you slide across the letters, is marked beta and switched on in the settings.
• A utility keyboard, opened by swiping up from the space bar, with clipboard actions, arrow keys and voice input.
• Your own dictionary: edit the words it has learned, and set abbreviations that expand into whole words or sentences.
• Looks: themes, a dark mode that can follow the system, colours that match the app you are typing in, and plenty of emoji behind a long press on the smiley key.
• Physical keyboards work with it too, and a power-saving mode turns off features to save battery.

Languages come as separate apps

English is built in, with QWERTY, Dvorak, Colemak and Workman layouts. Other languages are added by installing language packs, each a small app of its own with a layout and a dictionary. F-Droid carries dozens of them, Brazilian Portuguese and Portuguese among them. Once a pack is installed, you switch it on in the keyboard’s language settings. Dictionaries from different packs can be mixed, so a French layout can suggest German words.

No internet permission

The APK doesn’t request internet access, so the keyboard itself can’t go online; the project’s help pages make the same point. Its permissions cover your contacts (for name suggestions, which you can turn off), Android’s user dictionary, vibration and notifications. There is no microphone permission either: the voice input key hands over to Google voice typing or another speech app you have installed, which does the listening.

About this file

• This is F-Droid’s build of AnySoftKeyboard 1.13, signed with F-Droid’s key. ASK is also on Google Play; the two are signed differently, so you have to uninstall one before installing the other.
• F-Droid numbers this build 1.13.8175. The developer’s own release of the same code is numbered 1.13.547.
• After installing, open the AnySoftKeyboard Settings app it adds and follow its steps to switch the keyboard on.
• The 24.9 MB file has native code for ARM and x86, 32- and 64-bit, runs on Android 6.0 and later, and declares 6 permissions.

CPU types in this build: arm64-v8a (64-bit ARM, almost every phone since 2017); armeabi-v7a (32-bit ARM, older and budget phones); x86 (32-bit Intel, emulators); x86_64 (64-bit Intel, emulators and Chromebooks).

Versions currently kept in the F-Droid repository. We host and check only the newest one.