When comparing SwiftKey vs F-Droid, the Slant community recommends F-Droid for most people. In the question“What are the best Android apps?” F-Droid is ranked 1st while SwiftKey is ranked 21st. The most important reason people chose F-Droid is:
Free and open source applications that are not for profit
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Highly acclaimed for its constantly improving prediction engine
The prediction engine of SwiftKey is continuously being improved by using data from social networks, text messages or even emails from the user's device. Predictions appear above the keyboard as soon as a letter is typed. By adjusting to the user's writing habits and style, it really helps to save time when writing.
Pro Can be customized with plenty of themes available
Swiftkey offers a wide range of different themes to add personality to your keyboard (some are free.. others paid for via in app purchases).
Pro Has a large number of languages available
Has 61+ languages available that can be downloaded. So chances are the languages you need will be available.
Pro Multiple simultaneous languages
Keyboard can integrate multiple languages into one seamless autocorrect engine.
Pro Can be resized to as large or as small as you want
You can choose between five different sizes to resize the keyboard.
Pro Can be undocked
The feature may seem odd but the ability to undock the keyboard is extremely useful in certain situations. For example when creating content or using difficult websites.
Pro Ad-free
SwiftKey is competely ad-free.
Pro Can be customized to have a numbers row in easy reach
Users can optionally display a number pad above the keyboard.
Pro Gestures typing or tap typing
Swiftkey supports both popular methods of typing. Either way the methods integrate perfectly with the predictions featured above the keyboard.
Pro Fast access to Emojis
When users type the name of the desired Emoji, a small list will come up where the right one can be selected.
Pro Free
Swiftkey is free to download and use, though there are in app purchases to unlock more features.
Pro Users can view in-depth usage statistics
SwiftKey will even provide you exciting data about how you type such as a heatmap.
The more you use SwiftKey, the more your heat map will transform from perfect circles into blobs where you tend to press. From the Heatmap you'll know where you tend to make mistakes and how SwiftKey is improved. Other stats provided include:
- Distance flowed in meters
- Keystrokes saved
- Typos corrected
- Words completed
Pro Supports Google voice dictation
Even though SwiftKey is a third party keyboard, Swiftkey still uses the preferred Google voice dictation.
Pro All the typing information saved from SwiftKey is synced across devices
Any learned words, phrases (inc. email addresses) will be backed up to the cloud and available across multiple devices.
Pro Various convenient layouts available, also for tablets
Among the layout choices is a split keyboard which anchors each half to the lower corners of the screen, where one would naturally hold a tablet device while typing, with the option to place a dedicated 10-key number pad in the unused space between them.
Pro Cloud backup
Pro Social Account Integration for learning new languages
Pro Non-profit
Free and open source applications that are not for profit
Pro All titles are free and open source
All apps and games on F-Droid are open source (FOSS), making for a complete store resource for users who want to use only open source software on their device.
Pro All apps have no ads nor tracking
This alone can be a great reason to use the apps available on F-Droid, but there is also the fact that this can increase battery life due to tracking and ads never requiring a data connection, since they are not present.
Pro Multiple repository sources
You have more than one source of apps and updates and local repository too
Pro Highlights 'anti features'
Features that are often considered undesirable by users and the open source community are highlighted. This could be advertising or connecting to non-free services
Pro Previous versions of apps remain available after updates
If you don't like to an app after an update, you can download the previous version again. This is not possible on GooglePlay.
Pro File sizes are shown
For those running out of room, the size of the APK is always shown.
Pro F-Droid compiles all packages
F-Droid compiles all the packages themselves ensuring a high level of security. Other stores just allow the developer to upload the app already compiled, meaning anything malicious could be in the app.
Cons
Con Swipe recognition not as smart as Swype
It requires much more precision, if you miss one letter you have little chance of having the desired word, which makes it difficult to use in some situations.
Con Privacy, automatically saves unknown words
E.g. passwords entered in plain text fields, place names, people names etc.
Con High data bandwidth usage
This product consumes several MB per week, sometimes per day. The fact that SwiftKey doesn't fix the bug despite many similar reports is not really reassuring.
Con No language separation or weighing
If you load several languages, you can choose any keyboard for any of them, but it won't help the recognition algorithm, which insists on giving other language words in the most absurd situations.
Again, no help from their support to arrange the situation.
Con Cannot remove some options
You cannot remove the emojis or Info button from the keyboard.
Con Themes are in app purchases
Like most third party keyboards, Swiftkey offers tons of themes but of course they cost money and have to be purchased through the app.
Con The smallest layout is too big
Con High processor/memory usage makes it unusable on older devices
SwiftKey is extremely resource-intensive compared to many of its competitors, and will often lag even on high-end smartphones.
Con Predicting and inserting word combinations faulty
Recent update enabled Swiftkey to predict short word combinations. In principle this should be quite convenient, but so far it turns out this new algorithm is defective and way too aggressive. Too often it inserts combinations that are completely meaningless, or inserts English combinations in Dutch sentences or the other way around. Has almost doubled the amount of corrections needed.
Con Bought by Microsoft
Will undoubtedly lead to less innovation.
Con No ratings/comments/number of downloads
All apps are presented equally. It is difficult to judge an app's quality/popularity before trying it. On the upside, descriptions are fair (written by the F-Droid maintainers, not by the app authors).
Con Not all apps have screenshots
It can be difficult to tell what an app is like without installing it.
Con Small selection
F-Droid has a small selection of apps when compared to other major Android markets. This is due to every app being open source and given away for free, something not many people are willing to do with their time and creations.
Con It doesn't have all the open source apps
There are many open source apps that aren't available on F-Droid due to their authors not making it available on that particular app store. One example is Omni Noted, which is on the Play Store but not F-Droid.
Con Descriptions are only available in English
Though the store app is multilingual, the app descriptions are only in English, meaning you must know English to find an app, even if the app is supposed to be multilingual.
Con A lot of apps lack polish
Since every app on F-Droid is FOSS and released for free, many of them aren't as polished compared to other markets and their paid app selections.
Con F-Droid bans Gab for being a “free speech zone” that will “tolerate all opinions”
F-Droid is just another liberal marxist echo chamber. It silences, bans, any opinion that deviates from their "progressive" marxist narrative.
Con It's not a good alternative for Google Play
Most useful softwares are not available on this platform so we can't call it an adequate alternative.
Con Updates are not automatic for non root users
You have to click the updates one-by-one in order to make them happen. If user has rooted their device automatic updates are possible, the app needs to be converted to a system app.
Con Most applications are outdated/deprecated
Most applications (80% of them) haven't been updated for more than 4 years.