How to stop Soft keyboard from popping up automatically

05 September 2013 - Filed under android

Problem: The softkeyboard is automatically popping up when your activity or fragment is loaded.

When an input is given focus, the default behaviour is for the soft keyboard to pop up. In the example below, listFilterText is getting default focus (as it is the 'first' input in the layout) and forcing the soft keyboard to pop up.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent">

    <RelativeLayout
        android:id="@+id/listSearchView" 
        android:layout_height="50dp"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:background="@color/DarkGoldenrod"> 
        <EditText 
            android:id="@+id/listFilterText"
            android:layout_width="match_parent"
            android:layout_height="match_parent"    
            android:hint="SEARCH" />
    </RelativeLayout>

    <ListView android:id="@+id/listView" 
        android:layout_below="@id/listSearchView"
        android:layout_height="match_parent"
        android:layout_width="match_parent" /> 

</RelativeLayout>

One solution

The most strightfoward solution I have found is to manually give focus to a non-input object. We do this by:

Enabling focus on the desired object via android:focusable and android:focusableInTouchMode="true"
Requesting focus on the desired object with <requestFocus />

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent">

    <RelativeLayout
        android:id="@+id/statSearchView" 
        android:layout_height="50dp"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:background="@color/DarkGoldenrod"
        android:focusable="true"
        android:focusableInTouchMode="true"> 
        <requestFocus />

        <EditText 
            android:id="@+id/statListFilterText"
            android:layout_width="match_parent"
            android:layout_height="match_parent"    
            android:hint="SEARCH" />

    </RelativeLayout>

    <ListView android:id="@+id/statListView" 
        android:layout_below="@id/statSearchView"
        android:layout_height="match_parent"
        android:layout_width="match_parent" /> 

</RelativeLayout>

Now when the activity/fragment loads, the focus is given to the RelativeLayout and the keyboard will not pop up until the user activates focus on the EditText object.

References

For more on focus order see: http://mobile.tutsplus.com/tutorials/android/android-user-interface-design-the-basics-of-control-focus-order/ http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/accessibility/apps.html

_{by Shayla Sawchenko}

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