RIME Chinese Input on Android

Staying Open Source for better Privacy and Security

Recently, to achieve a greater balance between security/privacy vs convenience as well as enhancing my workflow with Linux, I have switched to Android and to be more specific, CalyxOS on my primary device and Volla OS on my secondary device. I leave this whole transition experience for another post but since I use Chinese on a daily basis to communicate with friends and co-workers, the first thing I did was tried to figure out how to get Chinese input “safely”.

Why did I emphasize “safely”? Well, soft keyboards are actually one of the biggest attack surfaces for mobile devices so it’s important that you are careful about what you install. Also, you may notice that most soft keyboards you install are free? Let’s contemplate for a minute why that is…

So that’s why RIME has been my favorite Chinese input engine ever since I discovered it a couple years back. It’s opensource and it works on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android while supporting all the major Chinese input methods (ie. 拼音，速成，倉頡，注音). Having it installed on pretty much all the devices I use provides a consistent input experience and I kid you not; I am not compromising for security and opensource. The input experience is actually much better than most Chinese input engines I have used. The character…