Android keyboard with *offline* speech-to-text that does not use Google services

Question

I wrote this question, and it received a good valid answer.

Unfortunately, I did not include a key requirement, and that answer does not satisfy the requirement. My mistake.

Since that question already has a good answer, I will pose a similar question, this time adding the key requirement: that the keyboard and speech-to-text functionality both work completely offline.

So here's what I'm seeking:

An android keyboard that has quick access to speech-to-text (aka speech-recognition or voice-to-text) functionality, but that does not require any Google services or software. Must work completely offline.

Two apps that I have tested, but do not qualify:

• TouchPal looks like a good keyboard, but it requires Google's speech-to-text software, so it's a no-go. (2024 Update: The TouchPal website no longer exists, so I replaced the link to that site with a link to an archive stored on the Wayback Machine.)
• Swype requires an active internet connection for the speech-to-text functionality to work, so it's a no-go as well.

Prefer gratis, but paid is acceptable. Must be KitKat compatible.

Can anyone recommend one?

Update: As previously stated, this is similar to another question, but not a duplicate. This question adds a specific requirement not present in the other question. The accepted answer to that question does not satisfy the requirements of this question.

Answer 1

TL;DR: afaik there is still no app, but open source backends now exist, so maybe it is easy to wrap it in a keyboard application I've started to build a prototype.

About 5 years ago I discovered voice typing by google and enjoyed it very much. Then I banned google from my phone and had since to arrange without voice typing. Back then there weren't any open source projects for voice typing which were good and small enough to be used in an android app, so I abandoned the wish.

Today, though, there is pocketsphinx and kaldi which have decent "small" models for several languages and it seems even mozilla is working on something to be released in near future. I've just tried vosk (based on kaldi), which has a demo android app (sources, not apk) and models (<100MB) for multiple languages which can be plugged together easily. Building on this it should be possible to create a keyboard app with offline speech-to-text to be used with other apps, like the google one. Currently the models are also worse than google's, so expect many errors, but it would be easy to update with better models later on.

PS: I'm going to try building a prototype keyboard to see if it is usable yet. I'll let you know.

Answer 2

FUTO keyboard should fulfill your requirements. Louis Rossmann has mentioned that currently, the developer technically considers it to be in pre-alpha stage, but everything should work, so set expectations accordingly.