Feature request: Quick setting to hide keyboard.

[Starship-Headlight]

Use Cases

I read a lot of text files on my phone and when I want to highlight something, the keyboard pops up and the page scrolls up highlighting more than needed. I have to go back to remove the keyboard. (This happens a lot in note taking apps)

A Quick settings tile to disable the keyboard for some time will be an awesome feature. (Basically a one click toggle)

Proposal

• This feature could be implemented through a quick settings tile in android. We would only need to scroll down from top and toggle this setting on and off.

• Click the button to hide the keyboard (make it not pop up) and click it again to make it work normally.

• I tried finding an alternative for the time being and the only keyboard I could find that supported it was by a developer that I do not recognize and the development of the app has stopped for quite some time.

References

This is a very novel feature request if I am not wrong. I have looked through the issues.

[abb128]

I don't really know that this should be the responsibility of the keyboard. Maybe it would make more sense for the text editor devs to add a read-only mode? It is the text editor that's opening the keyboard after all, not the keyboard opening itself

[Starship-Headlight]

@abb128 I understand your argument. But there are a thousand services that deal with text and a keyboard is an integral part of all of them. We might not be able to change all those services but as a central part, a keyboard app can have such a feature and it will spread across all other services.

I am sure you might've faced this too if you read a lot on a notes app or a text editor app. I even went to the length of trying to disable all the keyboards on my device but android doesn't allow that in the settings.

Please do give it a little thought if it's possible to implement. Thank you very much.

[abb128]

Normally for reading text files I'll use the android built-in HTML viewer which doesn't offer editing capabilities or show keyboard. There's other options too like Markor, Xed editor, OnlyOffice (though this one's not super ergonomic) all of which offer a button to enter a locked or viewing mode that doesn't show keyboard. So it seems like a standard feature and I would recommend using one of those text editors or ask the developer to add such a mode.

I don't see this being a useful feature outside of this specific case, there's no real case you would want the keyboard to not show up in a messaging app, online form, etc. Only a text editor as far as I can tell. That's why I think it's better solved by the text editor rather than introducing a probably unnecessary general solution that might even cause bigger problems and confusion e.g. someone's trying to write a message in a rush or emergency but the keyboard is not showing up and the user doesn't know why (maybe they triggered the hiding by accident or forgot).

[Starship-Headlight]

@abb128 I understand the concerns about users forgetting to turn it off also the point of read only mode in text editors.

The reason behind suggesting this feature was me trying to read things on notes app and highlight, underline and do annotations while reading. If the note is in read only mode, I can't do all that but if it's not, then selecting the text to highlight it will cause the keyboard to pop up. And if you have used note taking apps on android for a long time for reading something then you will realize dealing with keyboard becomes a huge frustration.

As for users forgetting it, maybe it could be an advanced feature if that makes sense? Anyway, it could only be done with the quick settings tile so the user will definitely have to go out of their way to set the tile and they will able to see it when the scroll down from top of the screen.