Dictionary (and other quirks)

[Wansfeil]

I have always considered myself “slightly techy when I need to be”.

I have a passing interest in technology, but haven’t really kept myself updated over the years.

After a weird and difficult 2024 (which involved an involuntary on/off relationship with prescription painkillers hidden in my food by my now ex partner’s NPD driven mania) I finished the year in a pretty paranoid state and decided to spend NYE rooting my FP3+.

Post-withdrawal and less paranoid, I’m now dabbling in a little online communication (I deleted all my socials too) and thought I’d drop by here to give a tech noob’s opinion on this Murenia thing.

At first it felt clunky, but when taking into account that a) I feel safer, and b) the comparative budgets of these guys vs Google/Android, clunkiness now feels more like quirky charm.

I’m 43 and remember, as I’m sure others here do, when software didn’t insist on holding your hand and wiping your backside. I guess my initial WTF feeling was entirely to do with how quickly we become used to being spoonfed by big tech.
To all those posters here who seem irate at the oddities of Murenia, I’d say that the drive to retain privacy is as much our responsibility as it is that of tech companies, so let’s give a little slack.

One thing I still find slightly bothersome, though its beginning to just amuse rather than annoy me, is the dictionary and predictive typing system. As a writer, I find some of the suggestions pretty wild, as well as a lot of the words I have to add to the dictionary.
It also seems to work weirdly with Protonmail, though I don’t know if that’s just their app or a combination of their app and my OS. When I begin the delete a word, it immediately deletes the space before that word, which is bizarre.

All that said, I’m pretty happy with the software overall, and feel good about supporting the wider struggle for privacy, even in as small a way as I am.

Big love to the hardworking brainiacs who code this stuff. I don’t do what you do, so I can only imagine how complex it is. But I am a convert and am preaching the privacy gospel to anyone I hear ranting about tracking and planned obselessence via update withdrawal.

Here’s to a secure 2025

Regain your privacy! Adopt /e/OS the deGoogled mobile OS and online services

[obacht]

In phone settings → system → language + input you find keyboard settings, maybe tweaking them is helpful in your case (?)

The dictionary is there as well… but that’s rather awkward as you only can edit one word at a time…

If you feel techy enough you might want to dig into the user dictionary manager app and try and sort things out a bit.
I have not used it myself yet so I cannot give any more hints …

The onboard user dictionary is used by many but not by all apps. They need permission to do so … and I assume proton does its own thing for some let’s be sandboxed reason…

Edit: I just read that UDM might not work on custom roms like eOS…

[Wansfeil]

Awesome, thanks for the tips.

I did have a hunch that some of the quirks may have more to do with the interaction between privacy conscious apps, and not so much to do with sloppy development.
Again, it is a small price that I’m willing to pay.

I’ll take a dive into your suggestions.

And if there’s no major improvement, I’ll just continue to “teach” missing words to the dictionary, like it’s some kind of literary Tamagochi. In the long run, it will force me to give more consideration to spelling, which is never a bad thing.

Better than the training wheels of most modern software, which I feel only serve to slacken our abilities.

Thanks again!

[Wansfeil]

Update:

I did as you suggested and set my keyboard to be closer to original Android.

Things do seem a little better now, so unless I accidentally activated the placebo function, your diagnosis was correct.

Now my only ongoing task is to teach my new student of words such as “craic” and “Brutalist” and “gaslighter”, all of which I have added to my dictionary since Jan 01st.
Hope this gives an insight into my psyche