Does anyone have the answer to how the keyboard app used 5GB of data in the past month? Hell, it even used more data than watching YouTube in 1080p.
I do not use:
I of course will be switching to an alternative.
The app calls home to share telemetry and app analytics of which it has much. Use a FOSS alternative keyboard and you should be fine.
I recommend changing your account credentials while you’re at it. It was likely also keylogging a lot if not everything.
Yikes! That is quite a lot.
Do you think that the FUTO Android keyboard would be a good alternative? The last time I checked, they still consider it in active development and in alpha/beta, but it does seem to be functional enough.
Are you on stock android?
The solution Ive seen others use is to disable network permissions on GBoard, but that’ll only be an option on alternative OSs like Graphene
To me, yes. It works well for how under active development it is. You may not be able to type super fast as if it were a mature app but its fast enough if you’re being deliberate and intentional with it.
That’s not normal. I’ve used 7 MB (yes, MB) last month and I use GIFs and emojis.
You can also use something like netguard on stock android, but it occupies a vpn spot
Are you sure that is correct? Are you using a third party app for tracking internet use? Do you download a lot of offline voice packs/handwriting packs?
I have used network inspection on GBoard with privacy settings turned on, and it does not send out much, only:
I do not think it can do 5 GB of data usage in a month on its own.
Here is a 2022 study showing it better: https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/gboard_kamil.pdf
Relevant results here:
Opting out of this
setting reduced the LATIN_IME logs only to contain a single log entry, which consisted of a
timestamp, the keyboard event “IMS_INPUT_VIEW_STARTED”, the Gboard version and keyboard layout, as well as a couple of other fields which were deemed insignificant.
Which means turning off privacy invasive settings reduces data shared to minimal.
Gboard also uses something called federated analytics for predictive text and other intelligent features, so it does not share what you type anyway: Improving Gboard language models via private federated analytics
Yeah thats a good solution for stock android, use a firewall that can block network traffic on a per-app basis. I havent used netguard, but RethinkDNS works pretty well too
HeliBoard is the best open scoure alternative to Gboard.
5GB? I highly doubt it’s just telemetry and analytics. 
I think that is what I am using currently.
Yes stock android on the Pixel.
For reference (maybe I’m going about this whole thing wrong), it is through Non-Carrier Usage. I do not use offline voice packs/handwriting packs.
For the love all that’s supposed to be private and secure, please do not use GBoard. I hope you’ve already moved to an alternative.
100%, I am striking down these beasts where I am able too.
I have found a few reddit posts, albeit very sparse, about this issue within the last few months:
It appears it may be an issue with the push for AI into Gboard.
To me the issue with non private/Google apps don’t matter. It’s a no by default from me. There’s no more wasting time figuring out why these big tech tools are faulty. It’s by design. One should accept and move on. Or succumb to Stockholm Syndrome.
A harsher way to look at it I suppose but its warranted.
Got it. This is not the correct place to check mobile data. Non-carrier data includes data channels used by the app for local, p2p, or interapp communication(?) too (on WiFi).
Check Settings → Apps → See All Apps → Mobile Data usage for more accurate reporting.
For context, my syncthing Android on a private profile that only connects to standalone home wifi (no internet access) shows 100+ GB of usage, when it actually is not using any mobile data at all.
A lot of FOSS, non-BigTech apps are not accessible at all. I cannot recommend people who have mobility/audio-visual challenges, using non-Latin languages, or depend heavily on autocorrect/use slang use florisboard or heliboard, although I might use it myself. Sometimes the issue is lack of options and not any hostage taking.
I agree that ideally they should use good solutions, hopefully it becomes a reality soon with these projects making accessibility easy.
I think that is more than likely a software bug, from the sounds of it. Even if GBoard is sending back everything you type back to Google (not that I think Google is actually doing that), I don’t think that it would send back that much data. You could probably email Google Support about it and they may add it to a bug report list internally to fix the issue.
From someone who uses Heliboard on Lineage, I will say that GBoard is still a nicer experience overall, even though it’s not necessarily the most privacy-friendly. Not to say that Heliboard is bad, but GBoard is still a better experience in most cases with better text predictions, spelling correction, and swipe functionality. However, I hope that once the FUTO keyboard finally gets finished, it will change the game quite dramatically.
