Develop Reference

Is there an option to have both soft and hard keyboards active?

I am developing a IME keyboard which will have a automobile dial pad as the input handler in android. More clearly, the dial pad turns decide which alphabet to select.if the dial pad is pointed to "a" and then click the center button of the dial pad, it selects alphabet "a".
But my question is, is there a way i can have both hardware and software keyboards active consecutively?
My need is, My dial pad soft keyboard comes up and then i need to test it by right and left arrow of the hardware keyboard.
Thanks in advance

For future users- if you're implementing your own keyboard you can override boolean onEvaluateInputViewShown in InputMethodService. This function controls if the keyboard is shown, and the default implementation is to return false if a hardware keyboard exists. Change it to return true and it will work.
I don't know a way to do it from inside of an app.

for navigation part, i found the solution.
go to settings->input -> default-> disable the hardware physical keyboard.
then if any text edit is used, the soft keyboard comes up and then we can use the physical keyboard to navigate. (only navigation) .

Android keyboard issue when switching layouts with "?123" button

In Android if we press ?123 key (or similar) on software keyboard it shows us digits/symbols layout. And it will automatically turns back to alphabetical layout when whitespace pressed or EditText cleared by app from code.
Is there any option to turn off this "auto reset" behavior? Maybe some flag for EditText, InputConnection, InputType, etc.
Note that numeric keyboard is not suitable. It must be common keyboard (InputType.TYPE_CLASS_TEXT) which just allows only manual switching between layouts.

How can I make the Android emulator show the soft keyboard?

I'm debugging an issue with the soft keyboard display not displaying when it should. However, I don't have a device handy for testing. The problem is that the emulator never shows the soft keyboard.
Some skins have a keyboard constantly displayed on the right, some don't, but none that I've tried so far has ever shown a keyboard on the device screen.
Is there some setting that I missed?

I found out how to do this on the Android emulator itself (Menu, "Settings" App - not the settings of the emulator outside). All you need to do is:
open settings app -> Language & Input -> Go to the "Keyboard & Input Methods -> click Default
This will bring up a Dialog in which case you can then disable the Hardware Keyboard by switching the hardware keyboard from on to off. This will disable the Hardware keyboard and enable the softkeyboard.

Here are the steps:
=> Settings
=> Language and Input
=> Default
=> Hardware Physical Keyboard
=> off to turn on the On Screen Keyboard

If you're using AVD manager add a hardware property Keyboard support and set it to false.
That should disable the shown keyboard, and show the virtual one.

Settings > Language & input > Current keyboard > Hardware Switch ON.
This option worked.

Settings > Language & input > Current keyboard > Hardware Switch ON.
It allows you to use your physical keyboard for input while at the same time showing the soft keyboard.
I just tested it on Android Lollipop and it works.

To be more precise, with Lollipop these are the steps I followed to show soft keyboard:
Settings > Language & Input;
under "Keyboard & input methods" label, select "Current Keyboard";
A Dialog named "Change Keyboard" appears, switch ON "Hardware", then select "Choose keyboards";
another Dialog appears, switch ON the "Sample Soft Keyboard". Here you get an alert about the possibility that keyboard will store everything you write, also passwords. Give OK;
Repeat above steps in order to show "Change Keyboard" Dialog again, here the new option "Sample Soft Keyboard" is available and you can select it.
NOTE: after that, you might experience problems in running you app (as I had). Simply restart the emulator.

Edit your virtual device using AVD.
Press the "show advance setting" button to show more option scroll
down to the bottom and check "Enable keyboard input" press "finish" button
at the bottom corner of your window
then start the emulator device that you just set up.
inside the emulator, go to the "Settings" -> "Language & Input"
and in the "Keyboard & Input Methods" -> "Default" then "choose
input method" is shown
and switch off "Hardware Physical Keyboard" toggle button

There is a bug in the new version of NOX app. Software keyboard doesn't work after switching to it in settings. To fix this, I installed Gboard using the Play Market.

Go to Tools > AVD Manager > Click on ▾ on the Respective Emulator and > Wipe Data and Restart, will solve the problem on New Android Studio.

How to call/set a custom input method?

I followed these tutorial of developer.android, "Creating an Input Method" and "SoftKeyboard - Soft Keyboard sample".
Think its everything correct, but the custom keyboard dont pop up, what im doing wrong?
Only the default keyboard shows up.

The user has to choose that input method editor, either from the Settings app (for a permanent change) or via the little keyboard icon you typically see in the lower-left corner of every input method editor.

Switch from physical to software keyboard

Switch from physical to software keyboard.
Hi all,
I'm developing an application that will run on a tablet with Android 3.2.
I attached a physical keyboard to tablet then the software keyboard disappear.
Now I need to use the software keyboard in some activities, but I don't figure out how I can do that.
I tried different ways:
Android: show soft keyboard automatically when focus is on an EditText
http://dev.bostone.us/2009/11/04/android-show-and-hide-soft-keyboard-programmaticaly/#awp::2009/11/04/android-show-and-hide-soft-keyboard-programmaticaly/
http://plainoldstan.blogspot.com/2010/09/android-set-focus-and-show-soft.html
All these don't work if the physical keyboard is connected.
Someone know how can I achieve this goal?
Thanks

Under setting ther will be "Language & Input" >> Keyboard Setting >> "Input method selector" >> "Always show"
after you plug in the keyboard just put on the Keyboard ICON "on the bottom right of the screen" the select "USE PHYSICAL KEYBOARD" to off
Then the Soft keyboard (on screen) will appear normally until you unplug the keyboard.
In my case i use the barcode scanner instead of keyboard so I do need some softkeyboard however I use the USB hub and connect both barcode scanner and numeric keyboard.
hope this will help you.

Yes, when a keyboard is connected to the device, by default the soft keyboard is disabled. To enable it, we need to turn OFF hardware keyboard via:
Settings > Language & Input > Select Input Method
The option name may differ from device to device. We will be able to use the scanner along with the soft keyboard even though we turn it OFF.
And NO, there is no way currently to programmatically accomplish this. The most we can do is detect when a keyboard/scanner is connected and redirect the user to the Input Method selection window, by overriding the onConfigurationChanged method in your Application class:
#Override
public void onConfigurationChanged(Configuration newConfig) {
super.onConfigurationChanged(newConfig);
if(newConfig.hardKeyboardHidden == Configuration.HARDKEYBOARDHIDDEN_NO) {
((InputMethodManager)getSystemService(Context.INPUT_METHOD_SERVICE))
.showInputMethodPicker();
Toast.makeText(this, "Barcode Scanner detected. Please turn OFF Hardware/Physical keyboard to enable softkeyboard to function.", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
}
}

Actually we can use physical keyboard and soft keyboard simultaneously, what u have to do is that after connecting your physical keyboard, focus on any edittext, then you can see a keyboard icon on bottom right of your screen, click on it , it'll show all all available soft i/p options plus a Switch titled 'Show Virtual keyboard - keep it on screen while physical keyboard is active' - just check this option