How to capture the “virtual keyboard show/hide” event in Android?

Question

I would like to alter the layout based on whether the virtual keyboard is shown or not. I\'ve searched the API and various blogs but can\'t seem to find anything useful.

Answer 1

I have sort of a hack to do this. Although there doesn't seem to be a way to detect when the soft keyboard has shown or hidden, you can in fact detect when it is about to be shown or hidden by setting an OnFocusChangeListener on the EditText that you're listening to.

EditText et = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.et);
et.setOnFocusChangeListener(new View.OnFocusChangeListener()
    {
        @Override
        public void onFocusChange(View view, boolean hasFocus)
        {
            //hasFocus tells us whether soft keyboard is about to show
        }
    });

NOTE: One thing to be aware of with this hack is that this callback is fired immediately when the EditText gains or loses focus. This will actually fire right before the soft keyboard shows or hides. The best way I've found to do something after the keyboard shows or hides is to use a Handler and delay something ~ 400ms, like so:

EditText et = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.et);
et.setOnFocusChangeListener(new View.OnFocusChangeListener()
    {
        @Override
        public void onFocusChange(View view, boolean hasFocus)
        {
            new Handler().postDelayed(new Runnable()
                {
                    @Override
                    public void run()
                    {
                        //do work here
                    }
                }, 400);
        }
    });