# The Heliboard Virtual Keyboard

![[assets/heliboard.png]]

_If you're using your mobile phone for writing and editing, then s virtual keyboard is essential. Some are better than others, including the excellent Heliboard._

**Written By:** Geovian\
**Date:** 17 March 2025

## Introduction
I belong to several cyber security sites on various platforms. There, they talk about the various apps and solutions that they use to improve their operational security, otherwise known as OPSEC.

The three key takeaways that I've picked up through these platforms are:

- open source
- encryption and
- zero cost (free)

Finding something that has all three is like landing the holy grail. Finding something that has at least two of those things is like landing the jackpot.

So it is with the excellent virtual keyboard Heliboard. Now, it would be fair to say that I've used a number of different virtual keyboards in my time. All of them have come with some form of caveat. With Google and Microsoft keyboards, you can easily understand what those caveats will be. Lack of privacy and data vacuuming.

Trying to find a virtual keyboard without compromising your OPSEC ethics turned out to be a long wait. Bit Heliboard was worth it. Let's get down to the nitty gritty.

## The Detail
Heliboard takes its origins from the Openboard project, built for the Android Open Standards Project (AOSP). It was forked to become Heliboard. In doing so the app retained being an open source project plus its existence is purely offline. No phoning home to big mama, which is great for privacy enthusiasts.

### Three key pointers
As far as the app itself is concerned, there is a lot of technical setup to be done, but at the end of it, the results are quite impressive. Firstly, there are three themes that you can apply to Heliboard. These are: Material, Holo and Rounded.

Secondly, there are numerous color options that you can apply to the keyboard and the elements surrounding it. Under the **Appearance** you can apply the preloaded color templates, Or you can do what I did and that is to use the custom design template and come up with your own random selection of colors for the keyboard background.

Thirdly, you can add the emoji option as well as the number toolbar across the top like most other virtual keyboards have. Every character key will have a long press option that you can use to apply alternative character strokes.

### Voice to Text plugin
Fourthly, you will have to add in a plugin to activate voice to text input. This will be via the **Futo Voice Input Method** which you can download from Zapstore or F-Droid. Once downloaded and installed, you can then set it up and link it to the Heliboard app.

The Futo app is visible in the top toolbar via the microphone icon. At least being placed here at the top rather than being placed inside the comma character key (as it was on the Microsoft Swift keyboard) means that it is safely out of the way.

![[assets/heliboard_voice.png]]

### Notes snd Observations
Having most recently worked with Microsoft's Swift keyboard, I had to get used to some configuration changes regarding the placement of character keys and also to the design of emoji characters. These are mostly cosmetic in nature.

One of the things that appears to be missing which I found quite valuable on the Microsoft Swift keyboard is the ability to backspace and hold down the delete key and know that it would just delete the word in question without taking out a whole bunch of other characters preceding it, that is if you held the delete key down for too long. I've had a look in the settings to see if there is something to manage this, but it doesn't look like it.

### In Summary
Overall Heliboard is a very useful addition to the OPSEC toolkit as s virtual keyboard, and one that meets the criteria of zero cost, open source and privacy.

Available for download to your mobile at [Zapstore](https://zapstore.com)