When you look at the keyboard options for Android, you'll likely find two dominant choices: Gboard and Microsoft SwiftKey. The catch is that these keyboards can be too heavy on some devices, and there are plenty of users who want nothing to do with predictions, emojis, and gestures. If you're part of that crowd and you're looking for a lightweight and free Android keyboard, you should download a copy of Simple Keyboard, which is also open source.
"It does everything I want and nothing more." The famous anecdote about George R. R. Martin and his use of WordStar 4.0 resonates again. Sometimes, software tries to be too smart, and instead of helping, it ends up complicating our lives. As if that weren't enough, there's always the risk of losing performance because of that complexity, and Android is a perfect place to see this in action.
The heavyweights are too much for some devices
The main keyboards for Android are Gboard (Google) and SwiftKey (Microsoft). The public loves their prediction capabilities, gesture support, and emoji integration… but they're giants, and they simply drag on some devices. If your smartphone or tablet stumbles with these options and you prefer a lightweight Android keyboard that strips away all the bloatware of gestures and emojis, your first stop is the Simple Keyboard project by Raimondas Rimkus.
What Simple Keyboard offers
Being an open source project, Simple Keyboard is available on both the Google store and F-Droid, so you can download its APK individually if you prefer. Simple Keyboard is based on the LatineIME keyboard from AOSP, and its benefits are quite significant. First, the keyboard takes up less than a megabyte, which means less pressure on modest SoCs, as well as lower memory consumption.
Then we find options to adjust the keyboard's scale if it takes up too much screen space, and the ability to change its color palette or apply one of four default themes. The only available gestures are a swipe to delete, or a swipe on the spacebar to move the cursor to the beginning, but both can be disabled, just like auto-capitalization or the integrated number row.
Finally, Simple Keyboard lets you control vibration, audio, pop-up notifications when pressing keys, and their delay in milliseconds. This project by Raimondas Rimkus isn't the only one related to keyboards, and you should explore his GitHub profile if you want to experiment with even more compact alternatives, but if all you need is a lightweight and free Android keyboard, Simple Keyboard is the answer.
How to install Simple Keyboard
As an open source project, Simple Keyboard is available on both Google Play and F-Droid, so you can pick the source that suits you best. If you'd rather grab the APK directly, you can also do that through the link we shared earlier. The installation is straightforward: just download, open, and select it as your default keyboard from the system settings.
There are other minimalist keyboard projects from Raimondas Rimkus worth exploring on GitHub, but if you need a simple, lightweight, and free keyboard, Simple Keyboard does exactly what you expect and nothing more.
Download from Play Store: Click here.
Download from F-Droid: Click here.
