Detecting android softkeyboard show/hide events

Question

I am trying to detect showKeyboard and hidekeyboard events on phonegap. For that purpose, on deviceready event I placed following code

Answer 1

Using ionic-plugin-keyboard, the events native.keyboardshowand native.keyboardhide are fired, even in fullscreen / immersive Mode:

Example Code:

document.addEventListener('deviceready', 
  function(){
    // disable immersive mode  on Android when keyboard is shown
        try {
      if (cordova.platformId == 'android') {
        AndroidFullScreen.immersiveMode(false, false);
        window.addEventListener('native.keyboardshow', function (e) {
          AndroidFullScreen.showSystemUI(false, false);

        });
        window.addEventListener('native.keyboardhide', function (e) {
          AndroidFullScreen.immersiveMode(false, false);
        });
      }
    } catch (error) {
      console.log('deviceready - ' + error);
    }
}, false);

Answer 2

Apparently showkeyboard / hidekeyboard events WILL NOT fire when you are running your app in a full-screen mode (eg. no status bar at the top) because the screen size doesn't change when the keyboard pops-up.
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CB-392

If you do not want your app to run in fullscreen :

Try this first let's see if it narrows down your problem to the event firing or the function it tries to call when the event fires.

function onDeviceReady() {
    alert("Device Ready");
    document.addEventListener("showkeyboard", function(){ alert("Keyboard is ON");}, false);
    document.addEventListener("hidekeyboard", function(){ alert("Keyboard is OFF");}, false);
}

I have tested this on Android 4.2 and 4.3 worked fine on both.

Note:

To turn fullscreen off:
Remove NoTitleBar from your AndroidManifest.xml:

android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Black.NoTitleBar

And / or add these lines to the onCreate method in your MainActivity.java:

getWindow().clearFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_FULLSCREEN);
getWindow().addFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_FORCE_NOT_FULLSCREEN);