A privacy-first, deeply customizable open-source keyboard for Android.
What you type stays on your device. Always.
Your keyboard sees everything — passwords, messages, searches. Most keyboards phone home. SonderKey can't:
| Variant | Network access | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| 🔒 Offline | ❌ Impossible — no INTERNET permission in the manifest |
Maximum privacy |
| 🪶 Offline Lite | ❌ Impossible | Minimal footprint, no AI |
| 🌐 Standard | Opt-in only, with your own API keys | AI features, dynamic downloads |
No tracking. No analytics. No accounts. No data collection of any kind.
- 🎙️ On-device voice typing — speech to text that runs entirely on your phone. Audio is never written to storage and never sent anywhere. Dictate as you finish, at every pause, or continuously; type alongside it; turn the spacing and capitalisation off for code. Optional download, English.
- 🎯 Autopilot — the keyboard quietly widens the touch area of letters you are likely to type next, so near misses land where you meant. Nothing on screen moves and nothing you typed is ever rewritten.
- ✨ Key press effects — a burst of particles from each key as you press it, in any shape, size, colour or image you like.
- 🎨 Deep customization — the Sonder theme sets keys, function keys, accent and background independently, with presets, sliders, hex entry and a live preview. Plus the full color editor, key styles, adjustable layouts, custom toolbar and image backgrounds.
- 🧠 Optional AI assistance — proofread & translate with Gemini (default), Groq, or any OpenAI-compatible provider, using your key — never on by default
- 👆 Gesture typing — fast swipe input powered by a native engine
- 📋 Clipboard history — with search, pinning, and undo
- 📝 Text expander — shortcuts with dynamic date/time/clipboard variables
- 🪟 Floating keyboard — draggable, resizable, multitask-friendly
- ✍️ Handwriting input & 🔎 emoji search & 🧭 dedicated text-editing mode
- 😀 Current emoji on any Android version — a colour emoji font ships with the app, so the newest emoji appear without waiting for a system update
- 🌍 Extensive language support inherited from the HeliBoard lineage
Full documentation: docs/FEATURES.md
Shipped so far
- ✅ Offline voice typing — on-device speech recognition, built on sherpa-onnx with NVIDIA's Parakeet. Your voice never leaves your phone, which mainstream keyboards structurally cannot offer.
- ✅ Sonder theme — four independently set colours driving both the keyboard and the settings app, derived on a perceptual curve so any hue stays balanced.
- ✅ Emoji independence — the emoji set no longer depends on the age of your device's system font.
- ✅ Dictation you can type alongside — pause mode leaves the keyboard usable mid-turn, and a switch turns off the spacing and capitalisation for exact input like code and shell commands.
- ✅ Autopilot — touch targets that follow what the dictionary expects next, capped so a deliberate press is never overridden, with an overlay that shows you exactly what it is doing.
- ✅ Key press effects — nine settings' worth of particles, including your own image.
Next
- 🌍 More voice languages — a model is described as a set of files, so a differently shaped architecture is one entry away
- 🎨 Theme sharing — presets gallery and shareable
.sonderkeytheme files - 🔍 Privacy dashboard — see exactly which permissions are active and prove to yourself that nothing leaves the device
Follow the releases to watch it happen.
Grab the latest APK from Releases.
Once installed, SonderKey checks for updates itself — there is no store and no account.
./gradlew assembleStandardfullDebug # everything, the usual build
./gradlew assembleStandardDebug # standard variant
./gradlew assembleOfflineDebug # no INTERNET permission at allRequires JDK 17, Android SDK platform 36, build-tools 36.0.0 and NDK 28.0.13004108.
The SDK path must not contain spaces — the NDK's make-based toolchain fails on them.
SonderKey is licensed under GPL-3.0-only (with Apache-2.0 and CC-BY-SA-4.0 components — see the LICENSE files).
Built on the shoulders of:
- LeanType by LeanBitLab
- HeliBoard by Helium314 and contributors
- OpenBoard and the AOSP LatinIME project
All original copyright notices are preserved.