Develop Reference

In android, how can I change IME from my app to use gboard instead of the native keyboard from the device manufacturer [duplicate]

Is there any way that we can switch installed keyboards programmatically (without going to the settings section manually)?
My requirement is that the user is presented with all the keyboards which are installed on the phone and gets a chooser dialog to switch to the one wishes?
(basically we want to cut down the step to transfer him to the settings page)

This piece of code will fulfill your requirements:
InputMethodManager imeManager = (InputMethodManager) getApplicationContext().getSystemService(INPUT_METHOD_SERVICE);
imeManager.showInputMethodPicker();
As Commonsware points out in his answer, there is no way to do this behind the user's back.

If your app has system privileges, and has the permission
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.WRITE_SECURE_SETTINGS" />
you can programatically enable the keyboard and set it as the current keyboard by making it the default keyboard WITHOUT USER KNOWLEDGE OR INTERVENTION!
//get the old default keyboard in case you want to use it later, or keep it enabled
String oldDefaultKeyboard = Settings.Secure.getString(resolver, Setting.Secure.DEFAULT_INPUT_METHOD);
//enable your keyboard
Settings.Secure.putString(resolver, Settings.Secure.ENABLED_INPUT_METHODS, "com.my.keyboard/.full.path");
//set your keyboard as the new default keyboard
Settings.Secure.putString(resolver, Settings.Secure.DEFAULT_INPUT_METHOD, "com.my.keyboard/.full.path");
You can enable multiple keyboards (such as the default keyboard and your own) by providing a list of keyboards to the ENABLED_INPUT_METHODS, separated by ':'. See docs
You can verify your keyboard's full package and path ID by invoking ime list -a through adb shell

If you have rooted device, you can use /system/bin/ime utility.
List all installed input methods: # ime list -a
Set google's keyboard as default:
# ime set com.google.android.inputmethod.latin/com.android.inputmethod.latin.LatinIME
On Java side use Runtime.getRuntime().exec(...).

Is there any way that we can switch installed keyboards programmatically (without going to the settings section)?
Fortunately, no, for security reasons. If an app could dictate what input method editor is used, malware would change the input method editor to their keylogger.

import android.content.Intent;
import android.view.inputmethod.InputMethodManager;
// To enable keyboard
startActivity(new Intent("android.settings.INPUT_METHOD_SETTINGS"));
// To activate the keyboard
InputMethodManager imeManager = (InputMethodManager)
getApplicationContext().getSystemService(INPUT_METHOD_SERVICE);
imeManager.showInputMethodPicker();

Android Lollipop soft keyboard doesn't accept keypresses with GL surface

In a current fullscreen opengl based project I work on, I have some GL based graphical elements, notably a text entry field. For the use to enter text when this element has the focus, I display the soft keyboard (which appears fine).
On android version before 5.0, the Google Keyboard was working fine, sending key events like for hardware keyboards. On android Lollipop, some other keyboards like Swiftkey or the free Hacker's keyboard are still working, but the Google Keyboard isn't anymore.
When pressing a key on the Google Keyboard on Lollipop, no visual feedback appears on the keyboard itself and my application receives the touch events as if the keyboard was not shown (but it is). The 'hardware' back key works fine though.
The view used in the app is a SurfaceView (and it's not a TextView). I've overridden onCheckIsTextEditor and I return a specific InputConnection from onCreateInputConnection where I've set the inputType to be TYPE_NULL.
Note that onCreateInputConnection doesn't seem to be called.
This app is compiled with android level 15 compatibility.
Any idea what would prevent the keyboard to accept touch events?
What should I do to debug the touch events flow?

I finally found a workaround to my problem, even though I don't really understand exactly why it works. This solution is partially based on what Cocos2d-x does for input on Android.
I created an android EditText (actually a class than inherits EditText in which I overrode onKeyUp and onKeyDown, this is to track focus and the back key).
Instead of having the SurfaceView the sole element of the activity, I created a layout that has the fake edit text in the background (but not fullscreen), and the SurfaceView on top:
private FrameLayout setupView(View androidView)
{
ViewGroup.LayoutParams framelayout_params = new ViewGroup.LayoutParams(ViewGroup.LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT, ViewGroup.LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT);
frameLayout = new FrameLayout(this);
getFrameLayout().setLayoutParams(framelayout_params);
ViewGroup.LayoutParams edittext_layout_params = new ViewGroup.LayoutParams(ViewGroup.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT, ViewGroup.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT);
edittext = new FakeEditText(this);
edittext.setLayoutParams(edittext_layout_params);
// make sure this edit text is not fullscreen
edittext.setImeOptions(EditorInfo.IME_FLAG_NO_FULLSCREEN | EditorInfo.IME_FLAG_NO_EXTRACT_UI);
// ...add to FrameLayout
frameLayout.addView(edittext);
frameLayout.addView(androidView);
return frameLayout;
}
I also added a TextWatcher linked to the fake edit text, this is mainly to capture the text entered by the user and send it back to the GL based edit text I have on the SurfaceView (in my case, when the afterTextChanged method is called, I transform the received characters to internal keydown/keyup events that are routed to my GL control).
When the virtual keyboard needs to be shown (for example when the GL text field has focus), I set the fake edit text content from the GL text field content, and attach this TextWatcher to the fake edit text, and attach the virtual keyboard to the android fake edit text.
// Control is the base class of my GL controls
private void uiShowVirtualKeyboard(Control control)
{
if (fakeEdit.requestFocus()) {
// textWrapper is our TextWatcher
fakeEdit.removeTextChangedListener(textWrapper);
fakeEdit.setText("");
// get the text from the GL Text entry
final String text = control.getTextContent();
// and make sure it's in the android EditText at start
fakeEdit.append(text);
// listen to user changes
fakeEdit.addTextChangedListener(textWrapper);
// show the virtual keyboard
InputMethodManager imm = (InputMethodManager) fAndroidActivity.getSystemService(Context.INPUT_METHOD_SERVICE);
imm.showSoftInput(fakeEdit, InputMethodManager.SHOW_FORCED);
}
}

I had exactly the same problem. Google keyboard did no show up correctly and passed touch input through it's buttons.
As it turned out Google keyboard was not happy with the default settings of EditorInfo class passed into onCreateInputConnection for a view. If you fill in at least imeOptions field and leave the rest to their default values it will work, even if you return null from the function.
In order to fix it i've added these lines to my SurfaceView subclass:
#Override
public InputConnection onCreateInputConnection(EditorInfo outAttrs) {
outAttrs.inputType = InputType.TYPE_TEXT_FLAG_NO_SUGGESTIONS | InputType.TYPE_TEXT_VARIATION_SHORT_MESSAGE | InputType.TYPE_CLASS_TEXT;
outAttrs.imeOptions = EditorInfo.IME_FLAG_NO_EXTRACT_UI | EditorInfo.IME_FLAG_NO_FULLSCREEN;
return super.onCreateInputConnection(outAttrs);
}

force keyboard open on android

does anybody knows how to force keyboard open on android browser (4.0 - maybe less)?
i tried this solution and it does not worked for me.
in project i am trying to get a text input working, but after submitting (intercept by jQuery) it holds focus but the keyboard disappears.
snippets:
$('#typer').blur(function () {
$(this).focus().click();
});
$('#typer').bind('keyup', function (e) {
var input = $.trim($(this).val());
// some lines of code..
$(this).val('').focus(); // clean up
}
iOS is also interesting.. but not tested yet.

Android pulls up soft keyboard whenever text input field is in focus. "Go" or "Done" button on Android works as form submit, therefore input text looses focus and keyboard disappears. User expects the keyboard to disappear after "Go", "Done" or "Enter" is pressed - so Android follows this rule. Forcing re-focus on field's blur will not do much since technically you moved to a different window.
$('body').click(function() { $('#typer').focus(); }
can provide a partial solution, whereby user has to click once anywhere in the body of the page for the typer to re-gain focus. It causes OS to move back to browser Activity and focus the input field. This fiddle shows it as an example: http://jsfiddle.net/Exceeder/Z6SFH/ (use http://jsfiddle.net/Exceeder/Z6SFH/embedded/result/ on your Android device)
Other than writing a PhoneGap-like wrapper to control imeOptions of the keyboard, I am not aware of any solution that can solve this problem.

How to Force Android Soft Keyboard Open from Native Code?

I have a game that uses a callback to Java from C++ to force open the soft keyboard when the user touches the screen. The Java code is simply this:
this._inputMethodManager.toggleSoftInput(InputMethodManager.SHOW_FORCED, 0);
This has worked fine for a while but recently we've been receiving complaints from some Motorola Droid users that the soft keyboard fails to open for them. Since we've only recently started to get these complaints and it's a number of users I'm thinking it was some kind of update to those devices.
Is there a better way I can force the keyboard to open? All the links I find online talk about using textbox controls and such but my app is primarily C++ and doesn't use the standard controls at all.

I don't know if this is related to your problem, but I was running into some issues using only InputMethodManager.toggleSoftInput() when devices would sometimes get "out of sync" and hide when I wanted to show and vice versa.
I've had some success by taking advantage of the fact that while IMM.showSoftInput() won't show a keyboard, IMM.hideSoftInputFromWindow() will reliably close one, so when I want to show a keyboard I now call IMM.hideSoftInputFromWindow() followed by IMM.toggleSoftInput(), and use IMM.hideSoftInputFromWindow() by itself to hide one.
[A day later...]
Writing the above yesterday made me rethink how I was dealing with the soft keyboard (I mean, showSoftinput() does work, just not the way we expected it to) and so here is a better way to do it:
First, you need to set up your view so that Android knows it can have a soft keyboard - described in the docs for InputMethodManager. In my case I have a single view derived from GLSurfaceView and so I added:
setFocusable(true);
setFocusableInTouchMode(true);
to the constructor and then the following 2 overrides:
#Override
public InputConnection onCreateInputConnection(EditorInfo outAttrs)
{
outAttrs.actionLabel = "";
outAttrs.hintText = "";
outAttrs.initialCapsMode = 0;
outAttrs.initialSelEnd = outAttrs.initialSelStart = -1;
outAttrs.label = "";
outAttrs.imeOptions = EditorInfo.IME_ACTION_DONE | EditorInfo.IME_FLAG_NO_EXTRACT_UI;
outAttrs.inputType = InputType.TYPE_NULL;
return new BaseInputConnection(this, false);
}
#Override
public boolean onCheckIsTextEditor ()
{
return true;
}
Now I can show the keyboard with:
InputMethodManager mgr = (InputMethodManager)mActivity.getSystemService(Context.INPUT_METHOD_SERVICE);
mgr.showSoftInput(mView, 0);
and the keypresses get reported via the view's onKeyUp() and onKeyDown() methods.
Hiding it is still done using hideSoftInputFromWindow()

Android set default keyboard

i want to set scandinavian keyboard as default keyboard on an android device and
i want to do this by code.
So i try with InputMethodManager :
InputMethodManager mng = (InputMethodManager)getSystemService(LoginActivity.INPUT_METHOD_SERVICE);
List<InputMethodInfo> m_list=mng.getInputMethodList();
and i find the method setInputMethod (IBinder token, String id) of the InputMethodManager class. But i don't find examples/documentation that explain me how to use it.Any suggestion? Thanks.

Hi everybody, i want to set scandinavian keyboard as default keyboard on an android device and i want to do this by code.
You cannot modify the "default keyboard on an android device" via code from a standard SDK application. The user can choose their own keyboard and locale via the Settings application. You can send users to the proper Settings screen via ACTION_INPUT_METHOD_SETTINGS and ACTION_LOCALE_SETTINGS, which are activity Intent actions defined on android.provider.Settings.
Applications that are part of the device firmware can use DEFAULT_INPUT_METHOD on android.provider.Settings.Secure.