I don't know if it's because I use my left hand or because I have ~~our~~ ~~or~~ ~~fault~~ fairly poor fine motor function, but I can't get through most sentences ~~with~~ without at least some ~~cordon~~ corrections. Most of the time the right option isn't even in ~~thy just~~ the list ~~is~~ of options.

I distinctly remember it used to be better and I didn't have to spend so much time backtracking.

Maybe on this phone it can't phone home properly and do it's learning.

I'm guessing parent was requesting an alternative that was demonstrably better rather than examples of how it's bad - and thus saying that GBoard is actually okay on this front, regardless of how actually usable it is.

For the record I'm with you, I WISH swiping was reliable but it's just so often so far off the mark. I remember it being better as well, but that was probably very early on in its use, when I was paying more attention to how I was swiping and going slower, as well.

> I'm guessing parent was requesting an alternative that was demonstrably better rather than examples of how it's bad - and thus saying that GBoard is actually okay on this front, regardless of how actually usable it is.

Yeah... this style of "polite" commentary ("Oh, you're claiming it's bad? Show me something that's better, smartypants!") drives me up the wall. Old farts might call it an offensive application of blowing sunshine up others' asses.

It's entirely possible for something to be both godawful and also be the only available option! People are well within their rights to complain about things that are godawful! [0]

[0] For the seeking-VC-funding crowd: If folks didn't complain, how would entrepreneurial-minded folks learn that there may be an opportunity to make money doing better?

Older versions of Google keyboard.

Aside from accuracy, I intermittently get a bug where the swipe gesture doesn't begin and I just end up typing one letter with each swipe. I can correct this state by dragging my finger around for about a full second or two, at which point the swipe trail reappears and starts working again.

Same here, it is infuriating. It also isn't very good for languages which contract words such as Danish. In Swype I could hit backspace once to place the cursor at the end of the last word and then swipe to add another word after it, but Gboard just annoyingly insists on "correcting my mistake" and inserts the space back again. I have to manually type in individual letters of all contracted words when writing in Danish.

I really miss Swype. I have tried other keyboards but I have yet to find one that doesn't suck.

Older Gboard (before it was called "Gboard" I think?) was quite excellent.

It started degrading badly for me around when it also started suggesting words that obviously came from the internet, e.g. stuff like "that" getting suggestions of "THAAAAAAAT", or current hyped brands I'd never heard of (much less typed out).

The original Swype.