Collective pending approval.

Awaiting approval from Open Source Europe.

Pastiera

Pastiera is an independent, free and open-source Android keyboard focused on physical keyboards, deep customisation, accessibility, and transparent, user-controlled software distribution.

Contributors


Pastiera is all of us

Our contributors 3

Thank you for supporting Pastiera.

Patrick Zauner

Admin
I maintain Pastiera because I want this keyboar...

About


Pastiera

The keyboard for your keyboard.
La Tastiera per la tua Tastiera.

Pastiera is an independent, free and open-source Android input method designed primarily for devices with physical keyboards.

Android’s standard input stack is built around touchscreens. Physical-keyboard phones and specialised input workflows are often left with limited layouts, awkward modifier handling and little room for adaptation. Pastiera turns the physical keyboard into a deeply configurable input environment instead.

What Pastiera provides

Pastiera supports configurable keyboard layouts, modifier and navigation modes, application shortcuts, cursor gestures, multilingual suggestions, autocorrection, emoji and symbol layers, clipboard history, voice-input integration and comprehensive backup and restore.

Layouts and mappings use open, editable formats and can be imported, exported and shared. Pastiera currently includes layouts and interface translations for a growing number of languages and is tested primarily on physical-keyboard Android devices such as the Unihertz Titan 2.

The project is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3. Its source code, build scripts, issue tracker and release history are publicly available.

Trust and accountability

Keyboard software occupies an unusually sensitive position: it sits directly in the input path and may process everything typed through it. A store badge alone cannot provide a sufficient basis for trusting such software.

Pastiera therefore works towards a verifiable release chain based on public source code, documented build processes, published hashes, signing-certificate attestations and independently inspectable artefacts. Stable and Nightly signing certificates are publicly documented through archival attestations. The Stable attestation already bears a qualified electronic signature under the European eIDAS framework. The long-term goal is to require every official release to pass a QES-backed authorisation step and to validate release approvals against a published allowlist of trusted maintainer certificates. Reproducible builds and further release transparency remain active development goals.

Our aim is not to eliminate trust through marketing claims, but to make that trust explicit, inspectable and accountable.

The project

Pastiera was created by Andrea Palumbo and is now actively developed and maintained by Patrick Zauner together with contributors, translators, testers and physical-keyboard communities.

The project is currently pre-1.0 and is developed as an independent European community project. It is not financed through advertising, behavioural profiling or the monetisation of typed data.

Distribution is a political choice

Pastiera will remain open source, copyleft, and available free of charge through GitHub and F-Droid. The same rights under the GPLv3 apply to every build, regardless of where it is obtained.

A Google Play edition may be offered as a one-time purchase. This is not a freemium model, and the paid edition does not unlock exclusive functionality. Its price is a deliberate political statement about software distribution: users who choose open, independently verifiable channels that preserve greater user and project sovereignty can obtain Pastiera free of charge. Users who prefer the convenience and perceived assurance of a dominant proprietary gatekeeper pay for that distribution choice.

Centralised software distribution is neither neutral nor cost-free. Choosing it reinforces the gatekeeper that controls access, visibility and policy enforcement across much of the Android ecosystem. Pastiera’s distribution model makes that trade-off visible instead of pretending it does not exist.

Why this Collective exists

Until now, most development and infrastructure costs have been paid privately by the maintainers. This Collective creates a transparent project budget separate from any individual maintainer’s personal finances.

Funds may be used for:
  • Hosting, domains and future synchronisation infrastructure
  • Test devices and specialised physical-keyboard hardware
  • Signing hardware, certificates and release-security infrastructure
  • Distribution, developer-account and platform fees
  • Design, translation, accessibility and documentation work
  • Reimbursing contributors and commissioning clearly scoped project work

Contributions support Pastiera’s development and infrastructure. They do not purchase exclusive features or control over the project’s privacy and security decisions.

All income and expenses managed through this Collective will be documented publicly.

Our team

Patrick Zauner

Admin
I maintain Pastiera because I want this keyboar...