Is there a way to tell if the soft-keyboard is shown?

Question

is there a way to tell if the softkeyboard is shown in an activity or not?

I tried

InputMethodManager manager = (InputMethodManager) 
getSystemService(getApplicationContext().INPUT_METHOD_SERVICE);
manager.isActive(v)

but isActive returns false only before the first time the keyboard is shown, but if the kb appears and then dismissed, isActive returns true also.

so is there any other method to check for this issue.

thanks

Answer 1

According to this POST

You cannot detect if soft keyboard is shown or not, but you can indirectly know that a soft key board is shown by knowing that the View of your activity is resized.

Imagine you have a ListView and at the bottom an EditText, you want to go to the bottom of the list when a soft keyboard is shown after user clicks the EditText.

You need to implement a subclass of ListView, then use it in your ListActivity or Activity or View.

public class ThreadView extends ListView {

    public ThreadView(Context context, AttributeSet attributeSet) {
        super(context, attributeSet);
    }

    @Override
    protected void onSizeChanged(int xNew, int yNew, int xOld, int yOld) {
        super.onSizeChanged(xNew, yNew, xOld, yOld);

        if (yOld > yNew) {
            setSelection(((ListAdapter) getAdapter()).getCount() - 1);
        }
    }
}

Hope this helps

PS. "check Configuration Changes" only works for hand keyboard.

Answer 2

You can detect the state AND coordinates of the software keyboard, using dumpsys shell command.

Because dumpsys requires permission.android.DUMP, which is a system application permission, you have two options: 1. use a rooted device to grant this permission. 2. override the problem using adb as described in my other answer.

Now, run the following command: dumpsys window InputMethod | grep "mHasSurface" to get the data you are looking for.

Answer 3

This is my idea. It is untested.

@Override
    public void onConfigurationChanged(Configuration newConfig) {
        super.onConfigurationChanged(newConfig);   

        // Checks whether a keyboard is available which is not hard keyboard
        if ((newConfig.keyboardHidden == Configuration.HARDKEYBOARDHIDDEN_NO)&&(newConfig.keyboardHidden != Configuration.KEYBOARDHIDDEN_NO)) {
            Toast.makeText(this, "soft keyboard visible", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
        } else if (newConfig.keyboardHidden == Configuration.KEYBOARDHIDDEN_YES) {
        Toast.makeText(this, "soft keyboard hidden", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
        }
    }

Answer 4

Please check Configuration Changes for your Activity

This for your AndroidManifest.xml

and this for your Activity class http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/Activity.html#onConfigurationChanged(android.content.res.Configuration)

You will need to @Override the public method onConfigurationChanged(android.content.res.Configuration) of your Activity to be able to handle, for example, these values:
hardKeyboardHidden,
keyboard,
keyboardHidden

For all possible values check http://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/res/Configuration.html

You will see there something like this:

HARDKEYBOARDHIDDEN_NO   
HARDKEYBOARDHIDDEN_UNDEFINED    
HARDKEYBOARDHIDDEN_YES  
KEYBOARDHIDDEN_NO   
KEYBOARDHIDDEN_UNDEFINED    
KEYBOARDHIDDEN_YES  
KEYBOARD_12KEY  
KEYBOARD_NOKEYS 
KEYBOARD_QWERTY 
KEYBOARD_UNDEFINED

Also there you will be able to read something like this:

public int  hardKeyboardHidden // A flag indicating whether the hard keyboard 
                               // has been hidden.
public int  keyboard    The kind of keyboard attached to the device.
public int  keyboardHidden  A flag indicating whether any keyboard is available.

UPDATE:

Here is a specific example of what I´m talking about:

http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/runtime-changes.html

    
@Override
public void onConfigurationChanged(Configuration newConfig) {
    super.onConfigurationChanged(newConfig);

    // Checks the orientation of the screen
    if (newConfig.orientation == Configuration.ORIENTATION_LANDSCAPE) {
        Toast.makeText(this, "landscape", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
    } else if (newConfig.orientation == Configuration.ORIENTATION_PORTRAIT) {
        Toast.makeText(this, "portrait", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
    }
    // Checks whether a hardware keyboard is available
    if (newConfig.hardKeyboardHidden == Configuration.HARDKEYBOARDHIDDEN_NO) {
        Toast.makeText(this, "keyboard visible", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
    } else if (newConfig.hardKeyboardHidden == 
          Configuration.HARDKEYBOARDHIDDEN_YES) {
        Toast.makeText(this, "keyboard hidden", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
    }
}