android keyboard not working

[strikersix23]

on android native keyboard not working while loading text-based oses

[copy]

Can confirm this, unfortunately bringing up a keyboard and capturing keyup and keydown events is quite tricky across mobile browsers.

[MailYouLater]

Suggestion: Instead of using the mobile device's touch keyboard with their mobile-centric layout and awkward input capture methods, simulate a keyboard with a real PC layout with an html/js virtual keyboard on the page.

[odog8]

My suggestion for this issue would be to send text using an <input> html tag.

[SuperMaxusa]

I tested Chrome and Firefox on Android and got some results:

Chrome fires a keyup/down event with the Unidentified key value other that the Enter key (https://issues.chromium.org/issues/41443178) and only the (before)input events are valid for text input.

demo video

chrome1.mp4

Firefox fires two events like the desktop version: the correct keyup/down event and the (before)input events. When deleting text, Firefox fires a keyup/down event with the Process key value and deleteContextBackwards as inputType, and fires a keyup/down event with the Backspace key value when the text input area is empty.
The Process key is a placeholder for IME events: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/71961563/keyboard-event-has-key-process-on-chromebook

demo video (2)

ffox1.mp4

Tested on:

• OS: Android 12
• Keyboard: GBoard 14.8
• Firefox 132 (Release)
• Chrome 131 (Release)

---

I have two possible solutions:

• make an own virtual keyboard like a https://furcan.github.io/KioskBoard/, but this solution will have a significant amount of code implemented
• leave the native keyboard and register the input event and simulate key presses. Since Firefox fires a keyup/down and input events at the same time, need to left only input event for Firefox Mobile or for all mobile browsers

Other notes:

• in 2021, the VirtualKeyboard API was released, which has an interesting things: virtualKeyboard.show() method and the geometrychange event, but has limitations: only HTTPS pages and only Chrome are supported (for 2024-25)

Links for testing:

• W3C Keyboard Event Viewer: https://w3c.github.io/uievents/tools/key-event-viewer.html
• FreeDOS profile: https://copy.sh/v86/?profile=freedos

If someone has an iOS/iPadOS device, I'd be interested to hear the results on those OSes, thanks in advance!