I am a totally blind user of a Samsung phone, Android 9. I am using TalkBack.

Before this september, I had used gBoard. I liked it the most because I could easily navigate through suggested symbols after holding some letter for a second. Then I bought a physical bluetooth keyboard and used it for a while. It turned out to be more usable when the phone was switched to Samsung Keyboard.

Now I want to revert back to the on-screen gBoard, but something has changed. The keyboard seems to keep enabling the explore by touch feature. It is so inconvenient because it enables when I swipe down to switch the navigation, then left to read the last word again. Plus now I always have to tap against the Enter key twice as well as to switch the language.

Is it some recent updates or did I tweak something in the settings and am unable to find out how to bring things back?

I also would like to know whether it is possible to use autocorrect with TalkBack. I have just tried Microsoft Swiftkey Keyboard as the app having the best autocorrect, but here I go again with the explore by touch feature. Autocorrect was enabled by default when I bought the phone 2 years ago, but that is my first phone, and the option would drive me nuts back then, so I disabled it.

So, the 2 basic questions are:

1. How do I adapt gBoard or any other keyboard apart from the one provided by Samsung by default?

And 2. Is it a good idea to use autocorrect? If so, how should I use it?