Plektra

Strike keys, strike chords.

Plektra, formerly 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. Plektra turns the physical keyboard into a deeply configurable input environment instead.

Plektra 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. Plektra 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.

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.

Plektra 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.

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 latest stable release of Pastiera was released on 25.09.2026, marking the transition towards Plektra.

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.

Plektra 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.

Users however, who choose open, independently verifiable channels that preserve greater user and project sovereignty can obtain Plektra have a place in our heart.

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.

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:

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.