How To Check If The Software Keyboard Is Shown In Android

Here is a method to detect if the soft keyboard is visible on the screen in Android. All the other methods I have seen test the height of screen elements to guess whether it is displayed. This doesn't work for keyboards like WifiKeyboard which is an invisible keyboard.

This method uses the callback result of InputMethodManager.showSoftInput() to determine if the keyboard status changed. This is suitable for me because I need to call showSoftInput() anyway if the keyboard is not shown. The result from the operation needs to be polled because it is asynchronous. This example only polls 500 milliseconds and assumes that anything longer than that is caused by the keyboard being loaded and rendered.

Here is how the code is used:

// try to show the keyboard and capture the result
InputMethodManager imm = (InputMethodManager) getSystemService(INPUT_METHOD_SERVICE);
IMMResult result = new IMMResult();
imm.showSoftInput(editText, 0, result);

// if keyboard doesn't change, handle the keypress
int res = result.getResult();
if (res == InputMethodManager.RESULT_UNCHANGED_SHOWN ||
        res == InputMethodManager.RESULT_UNCHANGED_HIDDEN) {
    showTags();
}

The IMMResult class is the key element. It looks like this:

    /**
     * To capture the result of IMM hide/show soft keyboard
     */
    private class IMMResult extends ResultReceiver {
        public int result = -1;
        public IMMResult() {
            super(null);
        }
        
        @Override 
        public void onReceiveResult(int r, Bundle data) {
            result = r;
        }
        
        // poll result value for up to 500 milliseconds
        public int getResult() {
            try {
                int sleep = 0;
                while (result == -1 && sleep < 500) {
                    Thread.sleep(100);
                    sleep += 100;
                }
            } catch (InterruptedException e) {
                Log.e("IMMResult", e.getMessage());
            }
            return result;
        }
    }

The useful result values are:

• InputMethodManager.RESULT_UNCHANGED_SHOWN
• InputMethodManager.RESULT_UNCHANGED_HIDDEN
• InputMethodManager.RESULT_SHOWN
• InputMethodManager.RESULT_HIDDEN

See the InputMethodManager documentation for details.

Hope this helps you!

About Roger Keays

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