Gboard safe to use with network permission revoked?
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/38292767
for English i use heliboard. but i type in other languages also, and there are no practical choices in foss keyboards for those specific languages which also have the mainstream IME/key layout for my language (not qwerty).
fcitx provides some hope for the future but for now, it also doesn't have the IME/key layout for my language (only has qwerty). hopefully it can also have handwriting in the future somehow (if only via user-installed model/blob similar to heliboard glide typing).
anyway, I'm on Graphene OS. so i wondered if revoking network permission and setting gboard permanently to incognito (is permanent possible?) would suffice to cut off data collection?
Yes, but you won't have access to most of its features other than just typing. Since you're using Graphene and Google Play/Google Play Services are sandboxed cutting network permissions from Gboard should be enough to completely disable its phone to home.
The problem with gboard is that is a google service, which is connected to google play services, which if you have, you have to let it connect to the internet.
So unless you have a firewall where you can filtered connection between the apps or domains connected to Gboard, it does not will change much
i'm trilingual and i use AnySoftKeyboard ☞ https://github.com/AnySoftKeyboard/AnySoftKeyboard or https://github.com/AnySoftKeyboard/AnySoftKeyboard
it supports 58 languages. Did you try ASK?