SwiftKey has become a nightmare

Hello,

Sorry to hear that SwiftKey didn't work out for you.

As I speak a little French, I'd like to follow this issue. There's something unclear which would make it very hard for me to reproduce your problem.

Like always : 

1. SwiftKey version. (As sometime we have different roll-out schedule, the version might be slightly different even it's the "latest")
2. Android version

Then :

• For the 1st and 2nd issue, they sound like the same, and we need some examples more specific. Which right words were corrected into the wrong ones? 
• For 3rd, "erase"? I heard there was a bug with the quotation mark suppression, but it was fixed in 6.5.4.21. Can you record a video for this?
• SwiftKey closed in what kind of situation? Force closed message or the keyboard disappeared? 
• Not sure what do you mean by "swift off", and what makes the keyboard laggy? I assume the "unpredictable" you mean the prediction quality drop?

I type a lot in French with SwiftKey, but I haven't seen the problems you reported. So that we need as more details as possible, screenshots and videos are highly recommended to be shared and uploaded.

Alpert

Hello

- Android 6.0.1, SwiftKey 6.5.4.24 (Beta)

- OK, have you ever tried to write "transfererai" or any word in that tense? Most of them get automatically corrected this way : "transférer ai".

Same, most of the words like "oblige" get automatically put to the past tense "obligé", that leads to ridiculous sentences. If you speak French you know it's less ridiculous to forget an accent on a letter than have past tense verbs everywhere they should not be.

- To show you a video of erased words I would have to record all the time and wait for "the moment" but sometimes on apps like Discord the keyboard becomes very laggy and some words tend to dissappear, maybe I go too close from the backwards button and it erases my last words.

I said laggy and unpredictable because sometimes the keyboard seems not to respond very well, there's a delay between me typing and the keyboard reacting, leading to more mistakes and words not even appearing. That's why I deactivated the swipe (I called it Swift? I'm an idiot) function, the one to create words without releasing the finger. It tended to behave weird when I typed too fast. SwiftKey thought I was trying to use swipe when I was just typing really quick, and the result was terrible.

Concerning the app closing, the keyboard just disappears while I'm typing. I have to touch the text box to make it come back. Simple as that.

Thanks for reading.

• I'm able to reproduce "transférerai" problem. Mine is showing "transférer au". Guess conjugaison française is too complicated for SwiftKey as well for me? XD. 
• "Oblige" is not a problem, as "oblige" and "obligé" is quite likely, SwiftKey doesn't understand which to use. But on the prediction bar, both "obligé" & "oblige" is there, you need to tap on the correct one instead of tapping on space bar.
• I understand the recording is tricky, but as an unknown issue, it would be hard for the devs to locate the problem without clear evidence. I'll check with the team to see if they received similar report.
• As for the lag, can you try this first : uncheck SwiftKey from battery optimization list (you can find this setting in android settings > battery). And add SwiftKey into the whitelist in RAM management app if you installed one. If it won't work, try to see in which app it lags the most.
• The disappearance, as you mentioned you turned the Flow (swipe) off, then I assume you're using gesture mode, which means swipe down is to close. 

Hello and thank you for the feedback

Hi,

I guess you misunderstood several things I said above.

• add "ai" is not always the case, as French verbs have up to 23 different conjugaisons. To tell SwiftKey that form exists would not hard at all for only one word, the hard part is apply to all. Anyway that's beyond what you and me can do, I'll talk about it to the team.
• I know the difference between "oblige" and "obligé", I mean "likely" is the way to type them. You can long-press on "Obligé" to remove it to make SwiftKey reset the prediction order. 
• "Gesture mode" is different in SwiftKey than other keyboards. It's not just you who cannot understand it in the beginning, don't worry. "Gesture mode" in other keyboards = swipe to typing = "Flow" mode in SwiftKey. The "Gesture mode" in SwiftKey is like this. Use gesture to do some additional functions of keyboard. Such as "swipe to left" to delete a word, "swipe down" to close keyboard. I think it could be that you typed fast and triggered "swipe down".
• I've recommended SwiftKey to my French friends and co-workers, this is the first time that I hear a negative feedback and it does make some sense in some point. 
• As the reason of the lag and disappearance is still unknown, I'm unable to give you "reliable" solutions. I did suggest something above that you can try. But a fresh install is always recommended. Besides the special RAM management method of Samsung, we're always trying to solve the user experience issue.

I'm afraid that's all I can do for now. I'll keep you updated if some progress was made.

Alpert

I admit we are a lot more misunderstood than expected 😊

- I know French is complicated. But telling SwiftKey than "tranfererai" is not an alien and may not need to be corrected don't seem that incredible. I don't need the app to know everything, just to know that verbs ending with "ai" do exist.

- OK for the "obligé" thing, I feel like this is annoying you now, I give up!
- Same for gesture mode, I got this now 😊

Thanks for your help, I won't bother you more.

If I said something offensive, I'm sorry. This was not the idea. But maybe you should know that I don't belong to the dev team, I don't hold any vote or right to add "ai" after verbs. What I can do is to give mods team a feedback based on your feedback.

Long-press on a suggestion to remove it, this is a regular method to reset the prediction when it goes wrong. I simply suggested it to you, so that you can give it a try. 

Look, I just want to give you some suggestions and opinions that might help you or what I do as a person who live in France and speak French for over 5 years. I do not defend for SwiftKey, neither to say I'm right about everything.

No offense taken, thus the smileys ;)

Hello,

I'm "jumping" on this thread because I feel very much with Adrien.

Swiftkey 6.5.5.30 / Android 7.0

I'm a native French speaker, I use 4 to 5 languages every day, and I loved Swiftkey on my iPhone. Recently, I moved to an Android phone, uploaded Swiftkey, and since then, typing French costs me more time than ever.

1. I concur with Adrien about the conjugation. It nearly feels that Swiftkey understands less French conjugation than it did before. One would think that grammar is a decision tree, and that programming rules wouldn't be that hard, but heck no.

2. What makes me really mad, is the accent dialogue. I have installed a French keyboard, in AZERTY, and when I activate accents, the é is not next to my thumb, it is completely on the right, while it is one of the most frequent accents needed in French.

2.1 guess where the à is... rightmost on the list

2.2 for u, same thing, none of the french accented u's (û, ü ù) are adjacent to my thumb

2.3 the list is long...

3. I would need to gather more examples, but basically it feels like I have to teach French to Swiftkey, and that many common words get a suggestion that is miles away from inference or language modeling

What I don't underestand is that it used to work just fine on my iPhone....

Was there any major version release with big engine changes recently ??

Thanks,

Michel

Hello Michel. It feels nice to see I'm not a lonely, angry, misusing consumer. In addition to all this I would also talk about some weird lags and freezes,when swiftkey seems to mistakenly detect a gesture on my part.

Either way I gave up on this keyboard, especially since I've been told right here that there is not much to be done. Right now I'm trying Ginger, that is not perfect, but steal a few good ideas from sfiftkey, and I'm also trying to go back to Google Keyboard.I'll have to choose one eventually...

Good luck in trying to speak French with swiftkey and thanks again for the backup 😉

Hello Michel,

Thanks for the feedback.

For the accented characters, you can try to toggle off the "all accented characters" in the settings, then there's only the useful ones for French on long-press.

Recently we don't have major changes on Android. I'll speak to the team to make sure. Edit: also, on iOS and Android, it's not the same platform, the code is different so might very well be the prediction engine, which might lead to different result.

Alpert

@Adrien,

Indeed: you're not alone :)

Good luck !

@Alpert,

Just switched off the "all accents", it definitely helps.

Thx.

For reasons that are different, I have to agree Swiftkey could be improved.

1. As highlighted elsewhere, the suggestions popup that takes focus automatically on Android, forcing me to go back in order to dismiss it, is just a pure nuisance, and of no practical use since the suggestions are always inappropriate. [Update: this seems to be caused by the "autocorrect" or "autosuggest" option in settings, it's and Android problem rather than specific to Swiftkey]. Screenshot here: 

2. Swiftkey does not learn that with certain people, the language that I use is always the same. That would make it so much better, since I am using three languages regularly, it's so difficult to write a sentence without getting some wrong predictions. Also, Swiftkey should understand that if I start a sentence in English, then obviously it's the next word should not be from the French dictionary!

3. When swiping, Swiftkey includes letters that are adjacent to those that are intended to be used, even if I pay attention not to include them! Now, this is good when you make a mistake, especially when words are long, but those letters should not be included in short words when the letters that I DO swipe on could produce other words that instead get ignored, in favour of words that include letter I did not swipe on!

I have the same problems as Adrien but in Polish language. Words are devided into two separate words what is strange because these endings not exists in Polish languange.
And of course wrong words replacement. For example: selected - "wiązany" but SwiftKey putted "wiemy" these are completly different meanings.

Yo estoy teniendo el mismo problema en español. Justamente hoy le estaba comentando a unos amig@s, que el teclado SwiftKey, progresivamente había venido desmejorando su calidad hasta un punto donde creo que voy a probar con otras alternativas. Y lo digo con base, ya que tengo como 5 años usándolo en todos los teléfonos Android que he tenido, y escribo mucho más que el usuario promedio. Y surgió el chiste de decir que la desmejora se debe a que ahora le pertenece a Microsoft, y es como un anti-midas, todo lo que toca lo vuelve heces

I tried to use SK without logging to account and with app data cleared. It works only for few days and the problem returns.
Very strange for me is that SK support doesnt see this problem we have in so many languages.
This problem has each of my colleages.

My swiftkey had become super laggy in the last few months (dont know what triggered the change, maybe my phone getting generally slower)

Anyways, as suggested by Alpert, removing the app from the battery optimization list. The lag is now gone, back to normal it seems to be! 

As to piggybackck on the debate about French, I am French and type 50/50 english french, sometimes mixed together and both languages work great which is a major reason why I love this keyboard.