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) 
getSystemServi         


        

Answer 1

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 2

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();
    }
}

Answer 3

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 4

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.