A private, smart, and deeply customizable open-source Android keyboard.
Forked from HeliBoard / OpenBoard / AOSP LatinIME.
Screenshots • Download APKs • Flavor Comparison • Features • Setup Guide • Ecosystem • Other Projects
LeanType combines the trusted, lightweight, privacy-focused foundation of HeliBoard with modern productivity features: Multi-Provider Cloud, Self-Hosted & Offline AI proofreading, On-Device Whisper Voice Typing, Handwriting Recognition, Smart Toolbar Auto-Spanning, Built-in Self-Updater, and Rich Text Tools, while keeping you in complete control over your data.
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LeanType is available in 4 distinct flavors designed to match your exact privacy preferences, hardware specifications, and feature requirements:
| Feature / Capability | 🌟 Standard Full-standardfull-release.apk |
🌿 Standard (FOSS)-standard-release.apk |
🛡️ Offline AI-offline-release.apk |
⚡ Offline Lite-offlinelite-release.apk |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Target Audience | Recommended for full feature set | F-Droid / 100% Pure FOSS users | Privacy purists wanting Local AI | Minimalists wanting Zero AI |
| Cloud AI (Gemini, Groq, OpenAI) | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | ❌ No | ❌ No |
| Offline AI (Local GGUF via llama.cpp) | ❌ No | ❌ No | ✅ Yes | ❌ No |
| Translation Engine | ✅ Built-in Offline (ML Kit) + AI + Translation Plugin |
✅ AI or Translation Plugin (User Choice / Auto fallback) |
⚙️ Offline GGUF only | ❌ No |
| Voice Typing (On-device Whisper) | ✅ Yes (via plugin) | ✅ Yes (via plugin) | ✅ Yes (via plugin) | ✅ Yes (via plugin) |
| Handwriting Input (ML Kit) | ✅ Yes (via plugin) | ❌ No (Proprietary-free) | ❌ No | ❌ No |
| In-App Self-Updater | ✅ Yes (GitHub Releases) | ❌ No (F-Droid managed) | ❌ No | ❌ No |
| Dynamic Downloader | ✅ Dictionaries & Models | ✅ Dictionaries | ❌ Manual loading only | ❌ Manual loading only |
| Internet Permission | 🌐 Required (Opt-in features) | 🌐 Required (Opt-in features) | 🚫 None (OS-level blocked) | 🚫 None (OS-level blocked) |
| Package ID | com.leanbitlab.leantype |
com.leanbitlab.leantype |
com.leanbitlab.leantype.offline |
com.leanbitlab.leantype.offlinelite |
| Min Android Version | Android 6.0+ (SDK 23) | Android 6.0+ (SDK 23) | Android 8.0+ (SDK 26) | Android 5.0+ (SDK 21) |
| Approximate APK Size | ~23 MB | ~11 MB | ~67 MB | ~26 MB |
Tip
APK Installation Notice: Google Play Protect or your browser may block direct APK installations downloaded from web browsers. If you experience installation issues, install via Obtainium or a package manager like App Manager.
- Multi-Provider Cloud & Self-Hosted AI: Integrated proofreading, grammar correction, and text rewriting powered by Google Gemini, Groq (Llama 3.3, Mixtral, DeepSeek), OpenAI, or any Self-Hosted local LLM server (Ollama, LM Studio, LocalAI, vLLM, or custom OpenAI-compatible endpoints).
- Dynamic Model Fetching: Automatically fetches and populates the latest available model IDs directly from your cloud or self-hosted provider.
- 🛡️ Offline Neural Proofreading (GGUF): Run compact, quantized GGUF language models directly on your device via embedded
llama.cpp—100% private, zero network access (offlineflavor). - 🌐 Multi-Mode In-Keyboard Translation: Translate text directly into any language without switching apps. Choose between Built-in Offline Translation (ML Kit) (
standardfullflavor with in-app model manager), dedicated Translation Plugin, or your configured Cloud / Self-Hosted AI Provider (Gemini, Groq, OpenAI, Ollama, local GGUF) with seamless automatic fallback. - 🧠 Custom AI Keys & Capsules: Assign custom prompts, personas (
#editor,#proofread), and themed tag capsules to 10 customizable toolbar keys.
- On-Device Whisper Voice Typing: High-accuracy speech recognition powered by compact quantized Whisper models via the LeanType Voice Plugin.
- Interactive Voice Toolbar: Real-time waveform audio visualizer, silence detection sensitivity slider, and background keep-alive options.
- ✍️ Handwriting Recognition: Draw characters or words directly on an expansive writing canvas using the LeanType Handwriting Plugin (
standardfullflavor), with dedicated settings and model management.
- 👆 Gesture / Glide Typing: Smooth swipe typing powered by native C++ libraries (
libjni_latinime.so). - 📐 Smart Auto-Spanning Toolbar: Dynamically expands and balances toolbar keys symmetrically to prevent awkward gaps across portrait, landscape, and tablet widths.
- 🧭 Dedicated Text Editing Panel: Gboard-style precision DPAD arrow navigation, selection mode (Shift + arrows), select word, select all, and editing shortcuts.
- 🖱️ Touchpad Mode: Swipe up on the spacebar to control the cursor freely across the screen, including full-screen laptop-style touchpad mode.
- 🪟 Floating & Resizable Keyboard: Detach into a moveable floating window with persistent positioning for multitasking.
- ⌨️ Dual Toolbar / Split Suggestions: Option to split suggestions from the quick-action toolbar.
- 🎨 Custom Layout Profiles: Save up to 5 custom layout profiles with persistent slot index tracking.
- ⌨️ Direct Switch Target IME: Bind keycode
-10076to any toolbar key to switch directly to a specific target keyboard (e.g. Japanese, Korean, or Chinese IME).
- 🔍 Smart Clipboard History & Inline Editing: Search clips in real-time, swipe right to edit text directly in the toolbar with full gesture cursor/deletion, swipe left to delete with 5s undo, and fold pinned items.
- 📸 Screenshot Suggestions: Detects recently taken screenshots and offers instant 1-tap sharing via the suggestion strip or clipboard history.
- 📝 Versatile Text Expander: Built-in shortcut expansion with dynamic variables (
%date%,%time%,%clipboard%,%cursor%), composable modifier filters (%clipboard:clean%,:singleline,:title,:slug,:upper,:replace), and automatic Wikipedia / research paper citation cleaner. - ✉️ Privacy-First OTP Auto-Fill: Notification-based OTP verification code detection without sensitive SMS permissions, with customizable messaging app selection.
- 📚 Smart Learning & Session Boost: Adaptive personal dictionary learning threshold (1 to 5 times) and dynamic session word boosting.
- 🚫 Blacklist & Regex Filtering: Filter offensive words or unwanted suggestions with custom regex pattern support.
- 🔄 Google Dictionary Import: Seamlessly import personal dictionary words exported from Gboard.
- 🔄 In-App Streaming Updater: Direct GitHub release checks and streaming APK self-updating with single-version changelogs (
standardfullflavor).
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- Cloud API: Obtain an API key from Google AI Studio or Groq Console.
- Self-Hosted AI: Run Ollama, LM Studio, or LocalAI on your local network (e.g.
http://192.168.1.100:11434/v1). - Open Settings → AI Integration → Set AI Provider.
- Select your provider (or choose Custom (OpenAI-compatible) for self-hosted instances), enter your endpoint URL/token, and choose your preferred model and target language.
- 👉 Read the Full AI & Prompts Guide
- Install the companion LeanType Voice Plugin.
- Open Settings → Voice typing → Whisper Speech Models.
- Download or import your preferred Multilingual Whisper model (e.g. Tiny ~32 MB, Base ~57 MB, or Small ~182 MB supporting 99+ languages).
- Tap the microphone icon on the keyboard toolbar to start typing with your voice!
- In LeanType, open Settings → Translation.
- Select your preferred Translation Mode:
- Built-in Offline (ML Kit) (
standardfull): 100% on-device private translation. Tap Offline Translation Models to download 59+ language pairs directly with in-app progress. - Translation Plugin: High-speed translation via the companion LeanType Translation Plugin.
- AI Translation: Translate using your configured Cloud or Self-Hosted AI provider.
- Built-in Offline (ML Kit) (
- Tap the Translate icon on the keyboard toolbar to translate selected text or your input field instantly.
- In the
standardandstandardfullbuilds, open Settings → Gesture typing to download the gesture library automatically. - In
offlinebuilds, download the library manually and load it via Settings → Gesture typing → Load gesture library.
- Download a compatible GGUF model (such as
Qwen2.5-0.5B-Instruct-Q4_K_M.gguforLlama-3.2-1B-Instruct-Q4_K_M.gguf). - In LeanType (
offlinebuild), navigate to Settings → Advanced → GGUF Model (.gguf) and select the file from your local storage.
Expand LeanType with official companion plugins:
| Plugin | Repository | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 🎙️ Voice Plugin | LeanBitLab/Leantype-Voice-Plugin | On-device Whisper speech-to-text engine |
| 🌐 Translation Plugin | LeanBitLab/LeanType-Translation-Plugin | Dedicated on-device translation provider engine |
| ✍️ Handwriting Plugin | LeanBitLab/Leantype-Handwriting-Plugin | ML Kit Digital Ink canvas recognition engine |
| 🎨 Community Themes | GitHub: leantype-theme |
Browse and share custom color themes |
Discover our complete suite of privacy-first, open-source Android applications and utilities:
👉 Explore All LeanBitLab Android Projects
- Bug Reports & Feature Requests: Open a GitHub Issue
- Discussion & Support: GitHub Discussions
- Official Telegram Channel: @LeanBitLab
- Theme Creators: Tag your repository with
leantype-themeto appear in our theme catalog.
Building and maintaining privacy-first, on-device AI and keyboard technologies requires continuous hardware testing, compute for model optimization, and development time.
If LeanType improves your daily typing workflow, please consider sponsoring our work!
- HeliBoard by Helium314 — the foundational keyboard project
- OpenBoard & AOSP LatinIME
- llama.cpp & llamacpp-kotlin — on-device local LLM execution
- whisper.cpp — on-device speech recognition
- All contributors and open-source supporters!
LeanType is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 (GPL-3.0).
See the LICENSE file for details.