A keyboard and a toolbox for the Unihertz Titan 2 Elite.
Found a bug, or want something changed? Open an issue. In the app, About → Report a problem fills in your version, phone and firmware for you.
PhysiBoard started as an input method for physical-keyboard Android devices, and it still is one — shortcuts, gestures, dictation, layouts. But an input method is always running, starts at boot, and can hold a paired ADB session, which turns out to be the only practical way to reach the things Unihertz locks away on this phone. So it also does those.
As a keyboard: hold-Fn dictation, a screen-wide trackpad, SYM pages, layouts, autocorrection, clipboard history.
As a device toolbox: remove the vendor apps Android refuses to uninstall, change screen density, unbury settings Android supports and this ROM hides, keep the keyboard backlight on, remap the Fn and orange side keys — all through one wireless-debugging pairing, no root and no companion app.
PhysiBoard is a fork of Pastiera by Andrea Palumbo (PalSoftware) and its contributors — the keyboard engine is their work. This fork adds a physical-keyboard-focused feature set (hold-Fn dictation, an always-on-in-the-dark backlight, a terminal-style UI) on top of it.
If you'd like to support the people who built the engine PhysiBoard runs on, back the original project on OpenCollective. This fork doesn't take donations of its own.
Everything here needs privileges Android will not grant an ordinary app. PhysiBoard reaches them through a vendored ADB pairing you do once — the same one the backlight has used since 1.0.1. Every change is reversible, and Reset device settings to stock undoes all of them at once.
- Remove bloat — Unihertz ships packages Android offers no way to remove. A curated catalog of 29, inventoried on a real Titan 2 Elite and pinned to the firmware version it was checked against, grouped from production-line test tools through to features that merely duplicate what Android already does. Disabling is the default and is instantly reversible; uninstalling is a second, deliberate step. Restore all puts everything back, driven by a journal rather than the catalog, so packages you disabled two releases ago still come back. Packages the phone or PhysiBoard depend on are protected in code and can never be offered.
- Android Auto stabilizer — one tap disables the six vendor tools whose job is stopping background apps from running. Android Auto is a long-running session, which is exactly what those interrupt. Reversible, and honest about being the most likely cause rather than a proven one.
- Screen density — fit more on a short screen. Applied with a fifteen-second countdown that reverts itself unless you confirm the screen is still readable, because a confirmation dialog is no use for a change that makes the screen unreadable.
- System tweaks — animation speed (all three globals, not the one everybody sets), notification history and one-handed mode: supported by Android, never surfaced by this ROM.
- Notification ring — a glow around the camera hole when a notification arrives and the screen is off, in the app's colour. The firmware compiles always-on display out, so this is a black lock-screen-topping screen on an AMOLED panel — black pixels are off — that ends on a touch, a key or an unlock, and stops holding the screen on after the time you choose. Only notifications you could dismiss; never in a pocket.
- Key mapping — every physical key and what it currently does, assembled from both the vendor rows the firmware reads and PhysiBoard's own handling.
- Orange side key — long-press it to open your assistant already listening, instead of the assistant's app.
Full change notes (per GPLv3 §5(a)) are in PHYSIBOARD_CHANGES.md.
- Hold Fn to dictate — hold the Fn key in any text field to start voice typing. Matched by hardware scan code so vendor Fn remapping can't break it. Haptic cues, an adjustable end-of-speech pause (default 2.5s), strong start/stop haptic cues, and a real profanity-masking toggle.
- Screen trackpad — hold Space and swipe anywhere on the display to move the cursor; hold Shift while swiping to select. The whole screen is the trackpad, it works in every app including terminals, and it needs no Shizuku or root. Trigger key (Space, either Shift, Sym) and activation (hold, double tap, single tap) are configurable.
- Always-on keyboard backlight — lifts the vendor's 30-second keyboard-light cap with a persistent device setting that survives reboots, applied in-app over the device's own wireless debugging (no companion app, no root).
- One pairing sets up everything — pair Wireless debugging once and PhysiBoard applies every device-level step itself: the backlight setting and the trackpad's "Display over other apps" permission. No trips to system settings.
- Update checks — checks GitHub for new releases daily and from the home screen, with a direct APK download.
- Terminal UI — slate + amber, JetBrains Mono throughout, and an action-surface home that only surfaces what needs attention.
- Sensible defaults + two-step onboarding — first-letter auto-capitalization, hold-Fn dictation, the screen trackpad and the always-on backlight all on, status bar hidden, Slate Dark theme, and a decluttered settings tree with search.
- Compact status bar with LED indicators for Shift/Alt and a variants/suggestions bar.
- Multiple layouts (QWERTY/AZERTY/QWERTZ, Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, translit, etc.), fully configurable with JSON import/export.
- SYM pages usable via touch or physical keys (emoji + symbols), reorderable/disableable, with an integrated editor.
- Clipboard history with pinnable items.
- Dictionary-based suggestions and autocorrection, with swipe-to-accept.
- Hold-Fn voice dictation, a screen trackpad, and an always-on keyboard backlight (this fork).
- Full backup/restore (settings, layouts, variations, dictionaries) and built-in update checks.
- Long-press a key to input Alt+key or Shift+key (timing configurable).
- Shift/Ctrl/Alt in one-shot or lock mode (double-tap), option to clear Alt on space.
- Fn Layer (Pastiera's Nav Mode): double-tap Ctrl outside text fields to turn letter keys into arrows and editing/shortcut actions — fully customizable.
- Standard shortcuts: Ctrl+C/X/V, Ctrl+A, Ctrl+Backspace, arrow/selection/page shortcuts (all customizable).
- Hold the Fn key in any text field to start voice typing; release to stop.
- Adjustable end-of-speech pause (0–10s, default 2.5s), profanity masking toggle, and firm start/stop haptic cues.
- Optional Alt+Ctrl trigger; the microphone is also always available on the variants bar.
- Hold Space and swipe anywhere on the screen to move the cursor; a small on-screen pill shows the mode.
- Hold Shift while swiping to extend the selection. Movement is sent as arrow keys, so it works in every app, including terminals.
- A quick Space tap still types a space; pressing another key while Space is down is treated as a normal chord.
- Settings → Screen trackpad: trigger key (Space, Left/Right/Either Shift, Sym), activation (hold / double tap / single tap — the tap modes stay on until you tap again, press Back, or tap the pill), sensitivity, and the hint.
- Needs the "Display over other apps" permission, which the one-time pairing grants for you (see below); otherwise the settings screen opens the system toggle.
- Lifts the vendor's 30-second keyboard-light cap with a persistent device setting, so it survives reboots — set it up once and forget it.
- Runs entirely in-app by pairing once with Android's own Wireless debugging — no companion app, no root.
- That single pairing also applies every other device-level step PhysiBoard needs (currently the trackpad's overlay permission), and a one-tap Reset to stock in Advanced reverts everything.
- Included layouts: qwerty, azerty, qwertz, greek, arabic, russian/armenian phonetic translit, plus dedicated Alt maps for Titan.
- JSON import/export directly from the app, with visual preview and list management.
- Layout maps live under
files/keyboard_layoutsand can be edited manually.
- Touch-based SYM pages (emoji + symbols): reorderable/enableable, auto-close after input, customizable keycaps.
- In-app SYM editor with emoji grid and Unicode picker.
- A variations bar above the keyboard showing accents/variants of the last typed letter.
- Dictionary-based suggestions and autocorrection with swipe-to-accept.
- User dictionary with search and edit.
- Per-language auto-substitution editor.
- Exact typing (fork): pick apps (terminals, editors) where suggestions, autocorrect, auto-capitalization, and double-space-period are all disabled. Installed web apps count too — they type inside their browser, so excluding one excludes that browser.
- Double-space → period + space + uppercase.
- Screen trackpad (hold Space + swipe) to move the cursor and select text.
- Compact status bar; with the on-screen keyboard disabled it uses even less space (PhysiBar mode).
- UI-based backup/restore in ZIP format (preferences, layouts, variations, SYM/Ctrl maps, dictionaries).
- Built-in GitHub update check: daily in the background and from the home screen, with a direct APK download and a "later" dismissal per release.
- Install the latest
physiboard-x.y.z.apkfrom Releases, or build it yourself (below). Once installed, the app announces new releases on its own. - Android Settings → System → Languages & input → On-screen keyboard / Manage keyboards.
- Enable PhysiBoard, then select it from the input selector when typing. (The app's two-step onboarding walks you through this.)
- Android 11 (API 30) or higher.
- A Unihertz Titan 2 Elite. That is the phone PhysiBoard is built for, tested on, and supported on.
- A plain Titan 2 will probably work, but is untested and unsupported. It shares the Elite's keyboard and scancodes, so most things should behave — but nothing here has been verified against that hardware, and bugs specific to it may not be fixable. The app says so once, on first run.
- No other device is supported. Support for the BlackBerry KEY2 and Q25, the Titan Pocket, Slim and original Titan, the Minimal Phone, and the Clicks keyboards was removed in 2.0.
Standard Gradle Android project, one build, application id brobata.physiboard:
./gradlew :app:assembleDebug # development build
./gradlew :app:assembleSideload # release-signed, installs alongside the real app
./gradlew :app:assembleRelease # the shipped buildRun the core + routing + service modifier regression tests:
./gradlew :app:testDebugUnitTest \
--tests brobata.physiboard.core.ModifierStateControllerTest \
--tests brobata.physiboard.inputmethod.InputEventRouterModifierE2ETestRelease signing is read from release/keystore.properties or the environment (PHYSIBOARD_KEYSTORE_PATH, PHYSIBOARD_KEYSTORE_PASSWORD, PHYSIBOARD_KEY_ALIAS, PHYSIBOARD_KEY_PASSWORD) — no keys are committed. See CONTRIBUTING.md.
The source namespace is brobata.physiboard. It was it.palsoftware.pastiera until 2.0, when the fork stopped tracking upstream; the application id has always been brobata.physiboard and does not change, because it is what Android uses to identify the installed app. Attribution lives in NOTICE.md and PHYSIBOARD_CHANGES.md, where the licence requires it.
Pushes to main and pull requests run .github/workflows/ci.yml: unit tests, lint, and the debug and sideload builds — the sideload build exercises the release R8 pipeline without the signing key.
PhysiBoard is a fork of Pastiera. The entire keyboard engine — layouts, modifier handling, suggestions, virtual-keyboard mode, the settings framework — comes from there. Several PhysiBoard features are intended as upstream pull requests back to Pastiera.
PhysiBoard is licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 3 — the same as Pastiera. See LICENSE.
Bundled third-party components (AOSP LatinIME, JetBrains Mono, the vendored Shizuku wireless-ADB code and libadb.so, Unicode CLDR data, Leipzig frequency data, CC0 sound samples) retain their own licenses — see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.
PhysiBoard exists because of Pastiera by Andrea Palumbo (PalSoftware) and its contributors. In-app credits (Settings → About) carry the full contributor and upstream-license attributions.