The FrankenKeys log

Three kinds of post, tagged.

RECEIPT is a checkable claim about this keyboard: a permission, a code path, a file format, with the place to look.

BUILD is a build log: how a piece of it was made, what it cost, and what was given up.

TEARDOWN is a look at somebody else's keyboard or at the system itself, from their own documentation, with a link to it rather than an accusation. Where a competitor is better, the post says so.

Nothing here carries a search volume, a traffic estimate or a testimonial, because I do not have any of those and would not invent them. Every post is dated, and the ones that depend on other people's pages say when those pages were read.

If a post is wrong, it is wrong against a public page with a date on it. corey@forgedev.studio.

RECEIPT Check whether your keyboard can reach the internetThree ways to see whether an Android keyboard holds the INTERNET permission, in about thirty seconds, using the phone and the Play listing.
RECEIPT Five permissions held, and the one deliberately missingThe complete FrankenKeys permission list, where each entry comes from, why two network permissions are stripped, and the build rule that keeps it so.
RECEIPT Decompile FrankenKeys yourself, with the commandsPull the FrankenKeys APK off your phone, open it in jadx, read the manifest and the source, and confirm there is no network code. Every command included.
TEARDOWN Which Android keyboards hold INTERNET, listing by listingThirteen Android keyboards and whether each requests network access, read from their own F-Droid listings and vendor docs. Dated, with the method.
RECEIPT What a keyboard can technically see, and what it cannotAny Android keyboard sees every key and can read the field it types into, passwords included. What limits it is its permission list and its own rules.
TEARDOWN Gboard's privacy settings, one by oneWhat each Gboard privacy switch turns off, in Google's own words, and the one thing no switch turns off because it is a permission, not a setting.
RECEIPT Voice typing without a network, and where the audio goesWhich process hears your voice when you dictate with FrankenKeys, what changes between Android 11 and 12, and the one case the keyboard cannot promise.
TEARDOWN FUTO, HeliBoard, FlorisBoard, Urik, FrankenKeysFive Android keyboards with no network permission, compared on what each gives up, from their own docs. Four of them beat FrankenKeys on source.
RECEIPT On-device grammar clean-up, and which phones have itFrankenKeys fixes grammar and tone on the phone. Which tier you get depends on whether Android's AICore and Gemini Nano are on your device.
BUILD Building a keyboard with no server, and everything we lostA build log of the features FrankenKeys cannot have because it has no server and no network permission, and what replaced each one.
RECEIPT One file, whole keyboardHow a complete FrankenKeys build, theme, effects, sounds and background photo, travels to another phone as a code, a QR or one file, with no server.
BUILD Fifty key sounds, no audio filesHow FrankenKeys synthesises fifty key clicks live in C++ instead of playing samples, why no two presses are identical, and what that costs and buys.
TEARDOWN Data safety labels versus the manifestPlay shows two things about an app's data: a developer declaration Google does not verify, and a permission list read from the manifest. Which to trust.
BUILD Thirty press effects at full frame rateHow FrankenKeys draws thirty press effects, fifteen trails and ten shaders without dropping frames, and the one place it has to fall back.
RECEIPT A one-time unlock with no account and no serverHow the FrankenKeys Pro unlock is bought once, restored on a new phone, and refunded, when the app has no account, no server and no network permission.
TEARDOWN The ai.type breach, revisitedIn 2017 a keyboard app exposed 577 GB of user records. What leaked, what did not, and what it proves about keyboards holding contacts and network.
BUILD Thirty languages with no cloud dictionaryEvery FrankenKeys dictionary ships inside the app: thirty languages, up to 25,000 words and 30,000 word pairs each, from public corpora, with no download.
RECEIPT What we can never tell you about our own usersOrdinary product questions FrankenKeys cannot answer about its users, because the app has no way to ask, and the one number this website counts.
BUILD Why release builds ship unobfuscated on purposeFrankenKeys release builds are shrunk but never obfuscated, so anyone can read the shipped code. The one-line rule, its cost, and what it is not.
TEARDOWN Keyboards that ask for contacts or a camera, and whyWhich Android keyboards request contacts, camera or accounts, and the reasons their own documentation gives. The point is that a reason should exist.