Enable the betterflo keyboard

Two ways in, and this is the one that doesn’t need the accessibility permission

By default, betterflo dictates through a floating mic that works over any app and doesn’t require betterflo to be your active keyboard — see Enable the floating mic. The keyboard below is a full keyboard in its own right: you type on it, and the mic is one key beside the space bar. Both dictate the same way, on-device.

Turning on a new keyboard on Android takes two system steps: first you enable betterflo in your phone’s keyboard settings, then you switch to it using the keyboard picker. That’s it — the same two steps for every third-party keyboard. This page walks you through both, and answers the scary-sounding warning Android shows along the way.

The betterflo Hub app guides you through these exact steps and gives you a button for each. You can also do them by hand from Android Settings — both paths end in the same place.

Why two steps?

Android never lets an app turn its own keyboard on. You enable it in system settings, and you select it — that’s a safety guarantee built into Android, and it’s the same for Gboard, SwiftKey, or any other keyboard. The Hub can open the right screens for you, but it can’t flip the switch on your behalf.

What the keyboard does

The keyboard is not a mic with keys drawn around it:

• A keyboard you type on. A full key grid, with a word-suggestion strip above it.
• Dictation as one key. The mic sits beside the space bar — tap it, speak, and your words land in the field you’re already in.
• An action bar: Fix, Tone, Rewrite and Translate. These work on the text in the field, and they run on your phone. A rewrite is shown beside your original, and nothing replaces what you wrote until you pick it — keeping your own wording is always one of the choices, and a “rewrite” that only shuffled your punctuation is never offered at all.

Two honest caveats about that last one:

• Fix, Tone and Rewrite need a small model you download, and they are permanently unavailable on the lowest device tier — those phones can’t run them. The app doesn’t draw a button it can’t honour, so if you don’t see them, that’s why. See what your phone gets.
• Translate works on every tier, though it may ask for a one-time download the first time you use it.

None of this is “Pro”. Pro is an unlaunched, unpriced idea — see pricing. What the keyboard gives you is decided by your phone, not by a plan.

Step 1 — Turn betterflo ON in keyboard settings

In the Hub, tap Open keyboard settings. This opens Android’s On-screen keyboard / Manage keyboards list.

1. Find betterflo in the list of available keyboards.
2. Toggle it ON.

When you flip the toggle, Android shows a confirmation dialog with a warning. Read the next section before you tap OK — it explains exactly what that warning means.

Prefer to do it by hand? Open Settings → System → Languages & input → On-screen keyboard → Manage keyboards and turn on betterflo there. (The exact menu names vary a little by phone brand and Android version.)

Understanding Android’s warning

When you enable any third-party keyboard, Android shows a standard system dialog that reads something like:

Attention: This input method may be able to collect all the text you type, including personal data like passwords and credit card numbers…

This is a generic Android warning shown for every keyboard — Gboard and SwiftKey trigger the exact same dialog. Android has no way to know what a given keyboard does with your text, so it warns about the worst case for all of them. Here’s the honest answer for betterflo:

• On-device by default. In this build, betterflo processes what you dictate on your device. Your dictation isn’t transmitted off your phone.
• Typing is handled the same way. betterflo is a full keyboard, so it sees what you type as well as what you say — that is what the dialog is warning about, and it’s true of every keyboard you could pick. In this build the typing, the word suggestions and the Fix / Tone / Rewrite / Translate actions all run on your device; there’s no cloud step in any of them.
• Verifiable, not just a claim. The specifics — what’s processed on-device, what a future opt-in cloud tier would and wouldn’t do, and your controls — are written down in the privacy policy. Read it before you decide.

Planned, not in this build

An opt-in cloud “Pro” tier and an opt-in way to help improve accuracy (where you’d choose to share raw → edited text pairs, with personal info redacted on-device first) are planned — not shipped in this build. When they arrive they’ll be opt-in, and this page and the privacy policy will spell out exactly what changes. Nothing here turns them on today.

Once you’re comfortable, tap OK on Android’s dialog to finish enabling betterflo.

Step 2 — Switch to betterflo

Enabling a keyboard doesn’t make it the active one — you still have to select it.

In the Hub, tap Switch to betterflo. This opens Android’s keyboard picker (the “Choose input method” sheet).

1. In the picker, tap betterflo.
2. betterflo is now your active keyboard.

You can bring up this same picker any time from the little keyboard icon that appears in your navigation bar while typing — handy if you want to switch back to another keyboard later.

You’re done

After Step 2, the Hub automatically re-checks and confirms betterflo is enabled and selected — you don’t need to tell it anything. Open any app with a text field, tap in, and start typing — or tap the mic key beside the space bar and speak instead.

If the keyboard doesn’t appear, betterflo doesn’t show up in the list, or dictation won’t insert into a particular app, see Troubleshooting. If Fix, Tone or Rewrite aren’t on the action bar, that’s the device tier or a download that hasn’t finished, not a fault — /devices says which one applies to you.