Develop Reference

Android 10 EditText box not updating with keyboard inputs

I've been thrown into trying to fix bugs in an app I didn't write, and I'm not all that familiar with Android. I'm having problems with text boxes not updating with keyboard inputs. Here's whats happening:
In android 10 (only) when I click on a text box, type stuff with the soft keyboard, nothing shows up in the textbox until the soft key board is minimized. But it works 100% fine in Android 5.1, 6, 8.1. (Also, compiling app with SDK for Android 8.1 or 10 makes no difference). The text box is never covered or hidden by the keyboard, it just remains empty until the keyboard is minimized.
The only thing that works is if I make the keyboard floating type, or if I position the textbox way at the top of the layout such that Android does not need to pan or resize the view to accommodate both the box and the default keyboard. A floating keyboard works anywhere, even partially over top of this text box.
I have tried every possible parameter combination I can find in the manifest and layout xml files, including android:windowSoftInputMode , android:fitsSystemWindows , android:isScrollContainer , android:gravity , android:paddingBottomandroid:configChanges
The fact this is -only- an issue for Android 10 is suspicious.

For anyone that finds this in the future: the issue turned out to be that hardware acceleration needed to be turned on. See EditText in Android doesn't show text when typing while using the on-screen keyboard

Android's EditText not receiving keyboard input correctly

Just found myself trying to figure out this strange behavior in for EditText.
Information:
Bug seems to only happen in some devices! for now I've only seen it in Sony Xperia D2303.
App description:
I'm working on an app that has a main activity and navigation is done trough different fragments that are replaced as user moves from one section to another.
At one point I'm showing a DialogFragment with an edit text field, with background set to #null, with a hint text. (I have also tried with a normal edit text, taken from widget list and dragged to the layout and found the same behavior).
Problem:
When clicking on the EditText, software keyboard SHOWS UP but when typing there is no letter input in the EditText! I can long press, to visualize cursor position marker and also the magnifying glass shows up.
Things I've tried:
- I've tried requesting focus with xml, programmatically.
- Setting touchable(in touch mode also)
- Setting descendantFocusability attribute of parent to 'afterDescendants'
- Overriding onTouchListener and showing keyboard programmatically through the InputManager and using the edit text's token
… and maybe other things which I don't remember
There is but a workaround that I've found!!! sending the app to background, and bringing it to foreground again… so it seems something related to focus maybe?? but then why does keyboard show up, and cursor marker and magnifying glass work?
This solution does not work for me as it depends on the user taking action
Has anyone found this problem? any suggestions?
Thanks in advance!

Android Keyboard with Emoji

So I want to have a keyboard in my app that has emoji just like Whatsapp or Hangouts. How can I do that? I want to leave my key keyboard as it is I just want to add tabs to put emojis. I would think it would be easily supported by the soft keyboard but I can find nothing so far. Anyone could tell how to do it?
UPDATE:
The keyboard with emoji is included in Android KitKat and can be accessed by long pressing the new line button in the keyboard. The Hangouts keyboard however has the emoji icon visible instead of the "new line" key. If someone knows how to make this the default (either in layout or programmatically) I will take that as the correct answer.

As #dbar pointed out, the answer is:
android:inputType="textShortMessage"
But in my case, I was already using textMultiLine, so I had to use the both of them together:
android:inputType="textMultiLine|textShortMessage"
Looks like this:
I'm not sure about the Exact android version, but this should work only on Android 4.1 and above

Finally the answer was:
android:inputType="textShortMessage"
The new line key becomes a key to take out the emoji keyboard. The only quibble is the 'new line' key from the keyboard disappears with this configuration (before you could long press to choose between emoji/new line but now it's only emoji).

In Google Hangout, the emoji button is not on the keyboard (at least on my phone which is already using a third party keyboard), it's inside of the TextEdit box, and so it's part of the application itself (Gabe, I'm talking about the latest Google Hangout on top of KitKat with emoji support, all the current screenshots I found of Google Hangout do not show what I'm seeing on my phone, so this must be a very recent feature).
This is actually pretty easy to do, placing an ImageButton to the right of a TextView inside a RelativeLayout (the RelativeLayout which is made to look like a TextView with a custom background).
Then, it's just a matter of hiding the keyboard when clicking on that ImageButton and replacing it with a panel full of emojis when that happens (like in this open source emoji android keyboard, which is under a creative commons non-commercial license).

There is no functionality to add tabs to any generic keyboard. Certain keyboards may support it, but it isn't a common feature. You could write your own fully custom keyboard, but that's a lot of work and will piss off many users.
Also, I'm not sure what you mean about by like in hangouts. I use hangouts- it doesn't do anything odd with my keyboard. It stays as Swype, there's no special emoji tab. It may be a feature of your favorite keyboard based on the input type (I assume both use input type textShortMessage). But it isn't a generic feature.

Android Edit Text Cursor Doesn't Appear

in my app I disabled the keyboard (I use now my custom keyboard) using this code:
editText.setInputType(InputType.TYPE_NULL);
Now, my problem is that the text cursor does not appear anymore in the edit text. What should I do? Any suggestion would be very appreciated.

There is an Issue opened in bug tracker Issue opened in bug tracker for this.
One of the users suggests the approach which works on "most" devices.
Briefly, all you have to do is call:
editText.setRawInputType(InputType.TYPE_CLASS_TEXT);
for your EditText view (after you called editText.setInputType(InputType.TYPE_NULL);).
You should probably also set:
editText.setTextIsSelectable(true);
in order for text to be selectable (though in does not seem to work properly with Samsung Galaxy SIII). This method is only available starting from HONEYCOMB (api11) so keep that in mind when developing for older Android versions.
Also it is stated that your EditText should not be the first view to receive focus when activity starts (if it is - just requestFocus() from another view). Though I (personally) have not experienced any problems with this.

Rather than just using a custom view for your custom keyboard, why not implement a full-fledged IME? That will solve your cursor problem, and even make your keyboard available outside your app (if you want).
This answer has a couple useful links if you want to do that:
How to develop a soft keyboard for Android?

I really wouldn't suggest this. Writing a good full fledged IME is really hard. In addition, users come to expect functionality from their keyboard (auto-correct, Swyping, next word prediction, the ability to change languages) that you won't have unless you spend months on the keyboard itself. Any app that wouldn't allow me to use Swype would immediately be removed (bias note: I worked on Swype android).
But if you want to integrate fully with the OS as a keyboard, you're going to have to write an InputMethodService. Your keyboard would then be selectable by the user in the keyboard select menu, and usable for any app. That's the only way to get full OS integration, otherwise you'll need to really start from scratch- writing your own EditView. Have fun with that, getting one that looks nice is decidedly non-trivial.
Also, setting input type null won't disable most keyboards. It just puts them into dumb mode and turns off things like prediction.

I tried the below answer and it worked, but take care that
1) EditText must not be focused on initialization
2) when your orientation changes while the user's focus is on the editText, the stock keyboard pops up, which is another "solvable" problem.
This was mentioned in a previous answer but take care that you MUST make sure your editText element do not get focus on instantiation:
https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=27609#c7
#7 nyphb...#gmail.com
I have finally found a (for me) working solution to this.
First part (in onCreate):
mText.setInputType(InputType.TYPE_NULL);
if (android.os.Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= 11 /*android.os.Build.VERSION_CODES.HONEYCOMB*/) {
// this fakes the TextView (which actually handles cursor drawing)
// into drawing the cursor even though you've disabled soft input
// with TYPE_NULL
mText.setRawInputType(InputType.TYPE_CLASS_TEXT);
}
In addition, android:textIsSelectable needs to be set to true (or set in onCreate) and the EditText must not be focused on initialization. If your EditText is the first focusable View (which it was in my case), you can work around this by putting this just above it:
<LinearLayout
android:layout_width="0px"
android:layout_height="0px"
android:focusable="true"
android:focusableInTouchMode="true" >
<requestFocus />
</LinearLayout>

Android EditText with Swype Keyboard typing issues

I have a user that is having problems when she attemps to type in my app. The device she is using is the Motorola Electrify running Gingerbread and she is using the Swype Keyboard on her phone. When she attemps to add text to an existing item it just overtypes unless she uses the Swyping gestures to build the words.
Just to be clear I dont have any listeners coded that are cauing this. I have tested with the other stock keyboard on her phone (Multi Touch) and everything seems to work fine.
An example of what we are seeing: Press A the A appears on the screen then you press n it replaces the A.
Here is the layout for the edit text:
<EditText
android:id="#+id/editor_text"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="0dip"
android:layout_marginLeft="10dp"
android:layout_marginRight="10dp"
android:layout_weight="0.72"
android:gravity="top"
android:inputType="textMultiLine|textCapSentences|textAutoCorrect"
android:singleLine="false" >
</EditText>

So I was the lead Android developer for Swype until May of this year. So I'll do my old friends a solid and give some free tech support. What version of Swype is she using? And is she doing anything funny with inserting her own text into the edit text or losing focus from the edit box? If she turns off predictive text does it still happen?
The problem she mentions sounds like a problem I saw with some custom implementations of EditText where they did not properly implement getExtractedText and our predictive text solution expected to be able to retrieve the previously typed text from the editor (to work around a variety of bugs in yet other apps). But if you're using a stock EditText that shouldn't be the case. Let me know the answers to the above and I'll see what I can drag out of year old memories.