Type — a black-and-white keyboard for the Light Phone. A faithful recreation of the Light Phone 3 keyboard, as a system keyboard for any app.

Built on light-keyboard by Adam Weber, extended with more languages, voice dictation, and more.

Languages (13): English, Hebrew, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Arabic, Mandarin (QWERTY pinyin), Dutch (QWERTY + Belgian AZERTY), Russian, and Polish — each with its own layout and long-press accents. Only English is built in; every other language downloads its dictionary automatically when you enable it, then works fully offline.

Typing: offline autocorrect (keyboard-aware — it weighs where your finger actually landed — with a distance-2 fallback, uses the previous word as context, and splits run-on words like "thisis" → "this is") and learns your vocabulary in every language · a suggestion bar with next-word prediction · auto-capitalize · double-space for period · a numeric layout that opens automatically for number / phone fields · Hebrew final-letter forms.

Voice dictation (optional, on-device): English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Polish via downloadable Vosk models; Hebrew via the phone's recognizer.

Make it yours: emoji picker, haptics, key-press sound, long-press delay, cursor-swipe sensitivity, keyboard height, number row — plus a quick-settings panel on the globe long-press.

Modular — only English is built in. To keep the base app small, only English ships its autocorrect dictionary inside the APK. Every other language downloads its dictionary (~0.4–0.6 MB) automatically the moment you turn it on in Settings → Languages; after that it works fully offline and learns your words, the same as English. Each then gets the full text stack: autocorrect, the suggestion bar, learned words and next-word prediction.

• English — QWERTY, built-in offline autocorrect, learns your words.
• Hebrew — Standard Israeli layout (finals included); downloads offline autocorrect that understands glued proclitics (ו/ה/ש/ב/כ/ל/מ — so "ושלום" is recognised and "ושל…" completes to "ושלום"); voice via the phone's own service (he-IL).
• Arabic — standard Arabic layout (all 28 letters, hamza forms and harakat on the 123-key long-press); downloads offline autocorrect. No voice.
• Mandarin — QWERTY pinyin (type romanized pinyin; ü and its tones on the 123-key long-press); downloads offline pinyin autocorrect + completion. It does not convert pinyin to Chinese characters (that would need a candidate-selection IME). No voice.
• Spanish / French / German / Italian / Portuguese — full typing with their layouts (QWERTY, AZERTY, QWERTZ) and accents on the 123-key long-press; download offline autocorrect, then learn your words. Each also has its own optional offline voice model (~30–48 MB) on that screen — fully on-device, the same as English.
• Dutch — two layouts to choose from: QWERTY (Netherlands) and AZERTY (Belgium/Flanders), both with Dutch accents on the 123-key long-press; downloads offline autocorrect and an offline voice model.
• Russian — standard ЙЦУКЕН (Cyrillic) layout, with ё and ъ on the 123-key long-press; downloads offline autocorrect and an offline voice model.
• Polish — QWERTY with the Polish diacritics (ą ć ę ł ń ó ś ź ż) on the 123-key long-press; downloads offline autocorrect and an offline voice model.

Install

With Obtainium, which keeps you up to date

1. Install Obtainium.
2. Add an app, and give it this repository: https://github.com/KEZO555/light-keyboard
3. It installs the latest release, and tells you when there is a new one.

Or by hand

Download the latest APK from Releases and open it.

Turn it on

Open Type. The setup screen holds everything:

1. Enable Type: opens Android's keyboard settings, where you switch it on.
2. Choose it as your keyboard: makes it the active one.

The settings below it:

• Languages: choose which languages the globe key (bottom row) cycles through; the emoji key opens emoji. English, Hebrew, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Arabic, Mandarin pinyin, Dutch (QWERTY + Belgian AZERTY), Russian and Polish. Only English's autocorrect dictionary is built in — every other language downloads its dictionary automatically when you turn it on here, then works fully offline. Hebrew and Arabic are caseless, so they have no shift key.
• Autocorrect (on by default): fixes misspellings as you type, using the active language's frequency dictionary (English built in, the rest downloaded) which also learns the words you use. Keyboard-aware (it prefers a neighbouring-key slip or a swapped pair), with a conservative distance-2 fallback for longer words, so it doesn't replace words you meant. Fully offline. Turn it off to type exactly what you tap. It learns your vocabulary in every language: an unfamiliar word with no near match is kept the first time; one that looks like a typo is offered as a correction once, but the second time you type it the keyboard trusts it — adds it to your vocabulary and stops correcting it. Rejecting a correction (backspace) also teaches it your word.
• Suggestion bar (on by default): word completions as you type, and — right after a space — next-word prediction from the word pairs it learns from your own typing (so "happy" might suggest "birthday"). Tap a suggestion to insert it; when autocorrect would change the word the bar leads with the fix alongside your literal word (tap to keep it). Fully offline; the next-word model is per-language and never leaves your phone.
• Auto-capitalize (on by default): capitalize the first letter of each sentence.
• Double-space for period (on by default): tap space twice to insert . .
• Haptic feedback: cycle Off / Light / Medium / Strong; tapping previews the strength.
• Key-press sound (off by default): the system click on each key, at your device's sound-effect volume.
• Long-press delay: Slow / Normal / Fast — how long to hold a key before its symbol/accents appear.
• Cursor swipe: Low / Normal / High — how far you slide on the space bar to move the caret one step.
• Keyboard height: Compact / Normal / Tall.
• Number row (off by default): a persistent row of digits above the letters.
• Emoji: tap a grid of candidate emoji to choose which ones appear in the keyboard's emoji panel (recently-used still float to the front).
• Voice dictation (off by default): turn it on, then download a language's offline model from Settings → Languages. A mic appears on the period key — long-press it (or tap the mic) to speak instead of type, fully on-device. English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian and Polish have offline voice models (~30–50 MB each). Hebrew has no offline model, so it falls back to the phone's own voice service (which a de-Googled Light Phone may not have). Arabic and Mandarin have no voice. Tap a downloaded model again to delete it and reclaim the space.

That is the whole setup.

Gestures

• Globe (marked with a small ⚙) — tap cycles your enabled languages (the active one is shown on the space bar, e.g. EN / NL / RU); long-press opens a quick-settings panel right on the keyboard (haptic strength, autocorrect, auto-capitalize, double-space, number row, plus a shortcut to the full settings) — no need to leave the app you're typing in. Comma key — tap types a comma; long-press opens the emoji panel (recently-used float to the front).
• Long-press a letter — pops up its corner number/symbol (selected by default); release to type it, or slide off the key to cancel and keep the letter.
• Long-press the 123/ABC key (hinted with the first one in its corner) — a picker of the active language's accents: accented letters (Latin), vowel points (Hebrew), hamza forms and harakat (Arabic), or pinyin tone marks (Mandarin).
• Long-press the period — starts voice dictation, in any language whose offline voice model you've downloaded (Hebrew has no offline model and needs a system recognizer most Light Phones don't have).
• Double-tap space — inserts . (sentence end).
• Drag the space bar — moves the cursor like an iPhone trackpad: left/right by character, up/down by line.
• Hold backspace — repeats, then deletes whole words after a longer hold.
• Enter — inserts a newline (or submits in Go/Search/Send/Next fields); it no longer closes the keyboard. Long-press Enter — hides the keyboard.
• Swipe down — hides the keyboard.

Haptics are light and crisp (short, low-amplitude), tuned to feel close to the iPhone keyboard, and respect the device's haptic-feedback setting.

Hebrew also snaps a letter to its final form at the end of a word automatically (e.g. typing מ as the last letter becomes ם), and back when the word continues.

Colour filter (Light Phone utilities)

Type also bundles the colour-filter utilities from the standalone Lightson app, so one app covers both. The phone stays in its always-on grayscale; Type only pauses it per app:

• Colour apps (Settings → Colour apps) — chosen apps open in full colour; grayscale returns the moment you leave them.
• Colour keymap — give the current app colour from a hardware key (long-press the LP3's camera button, volume up + down together, or double-press a volume key); grayscale returns when you leave the app or press again. Inactive on the home screen, and camera short-press still opens the camera.
• Close apps on lock — when the screen locks, the apps used since the last lock are closed (apps with active playback or calls survive) and grayscale is restored immediately.

One-time setup: enable the Type colour filter accessibility service (Settings → Colour service; it only watches which app is in front — it can't read screen content), and grant the secure-settings permission over adb:

adb shell pm grant app.lightphonekeyboard android.permission.WRITE_SECURE_SETTINGS

Build it yourself

./gradlew :app:assembleDebug      # debug build
./gradlew :app:assembleRelease    # release build (unsigned unless signing env vars are set)

Needs JDK 17 and the Android SDK (API 35). Tagged releases (v*) are built and signed by .github/workflows/release.yml.

Only English's dictionary (app/src/main/assets/en_words.txt, built by tools/gen_english.py from a frequency list such as Norvig's count_1w.txt) is bundled. Every other language's dictionary lives in dicts/ and is downloaded on demand: Hebrew (dicts/he.txt, from tools/gen_hebrew.py), Arabic (dicts/ar.txt) and the Latin languages (on the dicts-v1 release) come from hermitdave/FrequencyWords via tools/gen_lang.py; Mandarin pinyin (dicts/zh.txt) is the Chinese list converted to romanized pinyin by tools/gen_pinyin.py. The English and Hebrew typing models (app/src/main/res/raw/charmodel.bin, hebcharmodel.bin) come from tools/gen_charmodel.py and tools/gen_hebrew.py.

Releasing

Pushing a version tag triggers .github/workflows/release.yml, which builds, signs, and attaches the APK to a GitHub Release (Obtainium reads that).

One-time setup: create a signing keystore — keep it safe, losing it breaks future updates; it is gitignored — then store it as repo secrets.

# Generate the keystore (prompts for a password and a name; the key password can match the store one)
keytool -genkeypair -v -keystore release.jks -alias lightkb \
    -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -validity 10000

# Copy its base64 for the KEYSTORE_BASE64 secret (macOS)
base64 -i release.jks | pbcopy

Add four secrets under Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions: KEYSTORE_BASE64 (the value just copied), KEYSTORE_PASSWORD, KEY_ALIAS (lightkb), and KEY_PASSWORD.

Then for each release, bump versionCode/versionName in app/build.gradle and push a tag:

git tag v0.1.0 && git push origin v0.1.0

Credits

Type is built on light-keyboard by Adam Weber — the original black-and-white Light Phone keyboard recreation, and the foundation this project stands on. Type extends it with more languages, on-device voice dictation, modular downloadable dictionaries, next-word prediction, and other polish. Huge thanks to Adam for the groundwork. 🙏

A note

This is an open-source project, made for the Light Phone but not by Light.

License

MIT — © Adam Weber. Do what you like with it.