You can force Android to hide the virtual keyboard using the InputMethodManager, calling hideSoftInputFromWindow
, passing in the token of the window containing your focused view.
// Check if no view has focus:
View view = this.getCurrentFocus();
if (view != null) {
InputMethodManager imm = (InputMethodManager)getSystemService(Context.INPUT_METHOD_SERVICE);
imm.hideSoftInputFromWindow(view.getWindowToken(), 0);
}
This will force the keyboard to be hidden in all situations. In some cases, you will want to pass in InputMethodManager.HIDE_IMPLICIT_ONLY
as the second parameter to ensure you only hide the keyboard when the user didn't explicitly force it to appear (by holding down the menu).
Note: If you want to do this in Kotlin, use:
context?.getSystemService(Context.INPUT_METHOD_SERVICE) as InputMethodManager
Kotlin Syntax
// Only runs if there is a view that is currently focused
this.currentFocus?.let { view ->
val imm = getSystemService(Context.INPUT_METHOD_SERVICE) as? InputMethodManager
imm?.hideSoftInputFromWindow(view.windowToken, 0)
}
NEW ANSWER added Jan 25th 2012
Since writing the below answer, someone clued me in to the existence of ViewTreeObserver and friends, APIs which have been lurking in the SDK since version 1.
Rather than requiring a custom Layout type, a much simpler solution is to give your activity's root view a known ID, say @+id/activityRoot
, hook a GlobalLayoutListener into the ViewTreeObserver, and from there calculate the size diff between your activity's view root and the window size:
final View activityRootView = findViewById(R.id.activityRoot);
activityRootView.getViewTreeObserver().addOnGlobalLayoutListener(new OnGlobalLayoutListener() {
@Override
public void onGlobalLayout() {
int heightDiff = activityRootView.getRootView().getHeight() - activityRootView.getHeight();
if (heightDiff > dpToPx(this, 200)) { // if more than 200 dp, it's probably a keyboard...
// ... do something here
}
}
});
Using a utility such as:
public static float dpToPx(Context context, float valueInDp) {
DisplayMetrics metrics = context.getResources().getDisplayMetrics();
return TypedValue.applyDimension(TypedValue.COMPLEX_UNIT_DIP, valueInDp, metrics);
}
Easy!
Note:
Your application must set this flag in Android Manifest android:windowSoftInputMode="adjustResize"
otherwise above solution will not work.
ORIGINAL ANSWER
Yes it's possible, but it's far harder than it ought to be.
If I need to care about when the keyboard appears and disappears (which is quite often) then what I do is customize my top-level layout class into one which overrides onMeasure()
. The basic logic is that if the layout finds itself filling significantly less than the total area of the window, then a soft keyboard is probably showing.
import android.app.Activity;
import android.content.Context;
import android.graphics.Rect;
import android.util.AttributeSet;
import android.widget.LinearLayout;
/*
* LinearLayoutThatDetectsSoftKeyboard - a variant of LinearLayout that can detect when
* the soft keyboard is shown and hidden (something Android can't tell you, weirdly).
*/
public class LinearLayoutThatDetectsSoftKeyboard extends LinearLayout {
public LinearLayoutThatDetectsSoftKeyboard(Context context, AttributeSet attrs) {
super(context, attrs);
}
public interface Listener {
public void onSoftKeyboardShown(boolean isShowing);
}
private Listener listener;
public void setListener(Listener listener) {
this.listener = listener;
}
@Override
protected void onMeasure(int widthMeasureSpec, int heightMeasureSpec) {
int height = MeasureSpec.getSize(heightMeasureSpec);
Activity activity = (Activity)getContext();
Rect rect = new Rect();
activity.getWindow().getDecorView().getWindowVisibleDisplayFrame(rect);
int statusBarHeight = rect.top;
int screenHeight = activity.getWindowManager().getDefaultDisplay().getHeight();
int diff = (screenHeight - statusBarHeight) - height;
if (listener != null) {
listener.onSoftKeyboardShown(diff>128); // assume all soft keyboards are at least 128 pixels high
}
super.onMeasure(widthMeasureSpec, heightMeasureSpec);
}
}
Then in your Activity class...
public class MyActivity extends Activity implements LinearLayoutThatDetectsSoftKeyboard.Listener {
@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
...
LinearLayoutThatDetectsSoftKeyboard mainLayout = (LinearLayoutThatDetectsSoftKeyboard)findViewById(R.id.main);
mainLayout.setListener(this);
...
}
@Override
public void onSoftKeyboardShown(boolean isShowing) {
// do whatever you need to do here
}
...
}
Best Answer
To add to John's answer, Android always adds 'Go' to text inputs and always adds 'Next' to number inputs. I'd love to hear the person responsible for this choice explain their logic.
The softkeyboard design is just lousy in this respect, because every user I've tested with so far has thought the big blue button in the keyboard must be the button that takes you to the next form field and then at the last form field lets you submit the form.
iOS it's even worse in this respect, since they offer a 'Go' button with every form field and no way to tab through the fields. It's nice that Apple likes to make computers simple for people, but sometimes assuming that people like it simple can shade into presuming people are all idiots.
Sorry about that rant. I do have something constructive to offer:
If your last form field happens to be type=number, then there is a tiny hack that will work on Android as well as iOS: add an invisible text input to the form with
onfocus="$('#thisForm').submit();"
. In Android this field will briefly flash into view: in iOS it wont. To make the Android situation more palatable, you can either set a value for the text input like "Closing this form", or you can set its width to 0, which will cause the form field to be not quite 0 width but still very small.Horrible hack, but hey, blame it on the UI people at Google and Apple.