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[Q] Automatically switch keyboards when dock is connected

I use the Thumb Keyboard when I don't have the dock connected but when I connect the dock I have to use the ASUS keyboard because otherwise it won't detect the German QWERTZ keyboard layout on the dock.
Is there any way to automatically switch between those keyboards when the dock connects/disconnects? Currently I am using Tasker for this but it cannot switch between keyboards, only offers the software keyboard dialog and then I have to change it manually.
Thanks in advance.

Forum member Stuntdouble posted a work around for that problem here.. can't find the link to the thread, but I'm sure if you do a search you'll find it

Thanks, but he uses the same method I described already: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=13890068#post13890068

That's a security feature of android. App can't request changing input method, because it can be possible to hijack some input like passwords this way. User must select manually the input method. So, for your use case it can be possible to hack firmware to allow this, but it kinda complicated without sources.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk

MaluNoPeleke said:
I use the Thumb Keyboard when I don't have the dock connected but when I connect the dock I have to use the ASUS keyboard because otherwise it won't detect the German QWERTZ keyboard layout on the dock. <SNIP>
Thanks in advance.
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Strange because my T.F. does exactly that. I plug it into the dock, it switches to the Asus keyboard. I unplug it, it switches back to thumb keyboard.

It seems to work fine in the US, but if you use another nationalities keyboard layout the symbols end up in the wrong places on the Dock

usafle said:
Strange because my T.F. does exactly that. I plug it into the dock, it switches to the Asus keyboard. I unplug it, it switches back to thumb keyboard.
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Click to collapse
Exactly what mine does too. Only annoying thing is the popup message it displays. I'd rather not see it.

Same issue here

this app can switch keyboards based on tablet orientation: https://market.android.com/details?...roid.utility.kmLauncher&feature=search_result
If that can do it, so another app can switch keyboard is the dock is connected
p.s.
Asked the developer to look into adapting this app for our use

are you two sure?
I prefer the android keyboard and when it is selected and i dock it tels me that i should change, but it doesn't change itself over. and there are elments of the keyboard which do not work properly
not confusing it telling you to switch with doing it for you are you? The warning I see is for me to select a different source..i'm in the us fwiw.
ThaiM said:
Exactly what mine does too. Only annoying thing is the popup message it displays. I'd rather not see it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Fixed it: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1118164

Help...Problem with default keyboard

Hi I have just bought a 32G Nexus 7 and have stumbled across a really annoying problem. When using the on screen keyboard in some apps, I cant enter an @ symbol. It is nowhere on the keyboard. It does however appear on the keyboard in the most apps.
I noticed it when using a remote control app for my WDTV, I needed to enter my email address into a field, but the @ key was missing. It used the same keyboard that is used when typing an address into chrome. (If you check that one out you will see what I mean)
Is it possible to force an app to use a particular keyboard? I went through all the available options and couldn't seem to fix it.
Thanks for any advice.
Tom

How to close Amazon FireTv system on-screen keyboard using K400R.

Today I noticed that when you try to go to forums and type in your user name and password, you can only type in one field. Its pretty annoying... So today I was just pressing buttons trying to back out of the on screen keyboard and sure enough.
On the Logitech K400r, you need to hit the blue Fn button and F7. That will drop the on-screen keyboard away thus allowing you to type in your password after your user name, click on other on-screen fields etc.
Hopefully this will help someone else, as that on-screen keyboard is an eye sore...
If it helped, hit Thanks!

I have same as what you have been encountered the annoyed on-screen keyboard.
Im using Logitech k700 (I think) with trackpad built-in.
I haven't tried use null keyboard
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wparam.nullkeyboard
Problem is that Amazon fire tv doesn't have input selection and it may be will not working with the null keyboard.

yeah I did see it, but I also heard that it can break the other keyboards... The F6 trick works great! I also just installed Tapatalk and that makes my forums come thru perfect. Im using my K400r now, typing through the Amazon FTv on-screen keyboarrd seemlessly...

Has anyone found a way to do this without one of these keyboards? That pop up keyboard makes me want to throw my fire tv through the window. If there is a way to get to the full android settings, I'm sure it could be done.

There is a settings.apk that can be sideloaded,but I don't know if you can install null keyboard without root since the unknown sources issue in tween updated users.
If you are stuck without root on the latest of firmwares,you can install apk files from unknown sources without root since Amazon nicely enabled it,but I still don't know if null keyboard will install.

I'm rooted, but I hadn't heard of the settings apk. I'll have to look that up. I know on another android device there is a built in option to hide the on screen keyboard when an external keyboard is plugged in.

Here is one of the topics.
I hope the file is still available after all this time.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2714494
I hate modern browser "intuitive" website linking which removes the much needed http for link posting to work.

Software behind the hardware keyboard

So I have found the keyboard to be somewhat fraustrating. Not because it is virtual, but because of the software behind it.
First of all, it is rather strange that you cannot set more than one keybaord. Essentially, the device can have two keyboards that you might regularly swap between: the hardware keyboard and the one screen keyboard one might use while in tablet mode. The hardware keyboard uses the autocorrect of the keyboard you have set as your software keyboard. You cannot set seperate keyboard engines for the hardware and software keyboard.
As I said, the autocorrect/engine behind the hardware keyboard is dependant on your choice of software keybaord. However, as far as I can tell, only the defualt TouchPal keyboard provides any autocorrect for the hardware keybaord. The stock android keyboard offers no autocorrect with the hardware keyboard.
On a related note, TouchPal is awful. The autocorrect works pretty badly and is basically very annoying to use. I won't bore you with the details, but things like autocorrecting to a new word when you go back to edit a mistake. This makes it almost unusable.
Also the touch pad is very bad. No two funger scrolling means that again, it is pretty much useless.
I think the Yoga Book is a great device in most respects. Its intersting that all of these problems relate to the software and could potentially be fixed by Lenovo or there may even be fixes out there now.
Has anyone found any solutions to these problems? Thanks, Liam

I completely agree with you and am having the same frustration with the software behind the keyboard. So far the best solution I have found is to use SwiftKey or Swiftkey Beta (not sure which is best yet). With a bit of tweaking you can get decent auto complete and auto correct using both the halo and on screen keyboard. Much better than Touchpal at least. A couple of issues I have found using Swiftkey and halo keyboard: 1) auto complete seems to turn off when resuming from sleep mode (tapping the keyboard button on the top row reactivates it) 2) in WhatsApp Tablet app, after pressing Enter to send a message, the next message gets double words - I. E. Auto correct adds to what you type, doesn't replace it.

I can confirm that switching to SwiftKey makes the hardware keyboard usable! I'm actually using the keyboard to type this now. Naturally, I'm making tons of mistakes but it is catching and correcting almost all of them!
Can confirm that SwiftKey easily switches between physical keyboard and on-screen keyboard when the physical keyboard is toggled on and off.
If anyone is still using the default software keyboard, switch now!!!

Thanks for the tip! This makes a big difference! Have either of you found a way to get auto capitalise to work? The setting is enabled but it doesn't do anythig.

My issue with SwiftKey is that there is no good ways to select a suggested word. You always have to click with your finger on the screen which completely ruins ten finger typing for my.
So I ended up with disabled word correction as it's faster to remove some mistyped words and type again, than to click on the screen.
How do you handle suggestions made by SwiftKey?

faeArai said:
My issue with SwiftKey is that there is no good ways to select a suggested word. You always have to click with your finger on the screen which completely ruins ten finger typing for my.
So I ended up with disabled word correction as it's faster to remove some mistyped words and type again, than to click on the screen.
How do you handle suggestions made by SwiftKey?
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Click to collapse
I have found that SwiftKey enters the main suggested word when I press space. This is good for most of the time, but annoying when:
-I want to select a suggestion that is not the main suggested word (particularly a new word that it doesn't recognise)
-I want to add punctuation directly after the main suggested word (here, because I input the punctuation rather than pressing space, the suggested word is not entered)
I have certainly found using SwiftKey to be the best experience. It's quite a passive autocorrect that doesn't get in the way too much. I got so sick of TouchPal which really gets in your face with its incorrect predictions.
But still there is a lot of room for improvement. It's such a shame that it's terrible software that lets down this keyboard. In particular I don't understand why:
- Some keyboards (like the Google Keyboard) don't offer any correction or prediction when enabled. Does Android maybe treat the Halo keyboard as an external keyboard (which I suppose you wouldn't want predictive features for)?
- Keyboards that do offer prediction don't seem to respond to changes to their settings (I can't get SwiftKey to auto capitalise the first letter of a sentence for example). @thespinner02 mentioned tweaking with SwiftKey settings- I assume they meant for the onscreen keyboard because these settings don't do anything for the Halo keybaord.
I wonder whether there is a keyboard out there in the Play Store that works better with the Yoga Book. I'll try a few and let you guys know if I find one.

I tried several solutions but couldn't find anything good. Hardware keyboards are not that common on Android platform, I guess.

Even using Swiftkey I sometimes get different results depending on the app being used. Auto capitalise is working OK for me, in Word for example.
There are specific options in Swiftkey for Physical Keyboard: in settings, Typing, Voice & Other Input. In Physical keyboard section I have Autocorrect and Auto capitalize on. Everything else off.

thespinner02 said:
Even using Swiftkey I sometimes get different results depending on the app being used. Auto capitalise is working OK for me, in Word for example.
There are specific options in Swiftkey for Physical Keyboard: in settings, Typing, Voice & Other Input. In Physical keyboard section I have Autocorrect and Auto capitalize on. Everything else off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks! I didn't notice that- smart spacing etc makes a massive difference!
Pretty much my only problem with SwiftKey now is that it sometimes creates its own weird textbook instead of typing directly into the text field. But that's not a massive problem.
Also I sometimes accidentally change input method. Maybe I'm using a keyboard shortcut by mistake?

thespinner02 said:
Even using Swiftkey I sometimes get different results depending on the app being used. Auto capitalise is working OK for me, in Word for example.
There are specific options in Swiftkey for Physical Keyboard: in settings, Typing, Voice & Other Input. In Physical keyboard section I have Autocorrect and Auto capitalize on. Everything else off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In settings for hardware keyword I get no harder key found?
Went into Swift settings in onscreen. How to get settings for Halo?

With Yoga Book in laptop mode. Settings / Language & input / SwiftKey Keyboard / Typing / Voice & Other Input

You also need to make sure 'show input method' is not enabled in the keyboard settings/selector popup.
Does anyone else experience a problem with SwiftKey where in some text fields your text goes into a little popup text box at the bottom of the screen as well as the intended text field? And then to get rid of the popup text box you have to tap 'next'. This occurs in the Facebook messenger app for example.
Any way to disable it?
It seems to do this when the text field is small, but other keyboards just expend the text field as you type. The popup text box it creates doesn't expand anyway, so it doesn't offer extra functionality and is just an annoyance.

Can't change default keyboard

Since updating to Nougat, I can't find a way to change my default keyboard. I've gone to Language and Input - > Virtual Keyboard but after that, selecting a keyboard doesn't switch to it. Where is the setting to specify the default keyboard?

You might find your answer here:
http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/158966/how-to-change-default-keyboard-on-android-n
sent from a galaxy far far away

Thanks for the link. Unfortunately, none of the suggestions worked. Makes me think the keyboards are not Nougat compatible yet, at least with switching your keyboards.
The only way I can make this work is to go to Settings->Language and Input->Virtual Keyboard->Manage Keyboards
From there, I have to set all the keyboards off that I DON'T want to us. Very aggravating but it's the only way it works. Before, there was an menu that displayed what the current keyboard is, and selecting it would give you a Choose Keyboard menu where you could change the default keyboard. That is gone now under Nougat.
SwiftKey is the ONLY keyboard that actually senses when you haven't set it yet, and it will pop up the Choose Keyboard option. GBoard and the Samsung default keyboard do NOT do this at all. Guess that's why I continue to stick with SwiftKey. I only download GBoard to see what the latest updates were like. Still not completely impressed. The only saving grace the GBoard and Samsung keyboard is the ability to move the cursor. In GBoard, it's swiping across the spacebar, and with Samsung, it's swiping left or right across the keyboard itself. I know SwiftKey has the arrow keys, but they place them in the worst spot: right below the spacebar. I am constantly hitting them when I mean to tap the spacebar, so I turn them off.

I found that Samsung has a thread in their forums for discussing issues people are having with the update and they are apparently monitoring it continuously. I also contacted Samsung support via Facebook Messenger and they have noted the issue and also referred me to the same thread. Not too bad as far as response and assistance. Pretty pleased with that. Just hope they fix this issue. Sounds like it's an issue with how they have modified the stock Android Nougat settings. There should be a gear icon next to each keyboard in the Language and Input->Virtual keyboard section, but there isn't. Hopefully, they'll fix this with a later OTA update.
Here's the link to their thread for reporting issues with the latest Nougat update:
https://us.community.samsung.com/t5...e/board-id/ProductUpdates/page/1/thread-id/61

Well this stinks for alot of people, hope to see it fixed soon! I had forgotten about Perfect Keyboard Pro having the same type of instructional screen when it installs. It gave me the ability to bring up the switch keyboard screen!

Finally figured out how to quickly switch between keyboards. When your keyboard is up, just swipe down in your notifications area to bring up the notifications section. In it, you should see a notification from Android System stating Switch keyboard. Select that notification and you will be able to easily switch to another keyboard.
Too bad that wasn't documented by Samsung, but at least you don't have to go to Settings->Language and input->Virtual keyboard->Manage keyboards and then have to manually shut off all the keyboards you don't want to use in order to enable the one you want to use.