Android Custom IME use default on screen keyboard

Question

When creating an IME for Android you need to support the on screen keyboard (OSK) via overriding many of the InputMethodService methods such as onCreateInputView().

Is there a way to use the on screen keyboard from the users default IME. For example lets say the Android default IME is their default IME. When using my IME is there a way to use the OSK from the Android default IME instead of having to manually handle the entire thing (including prediction, etc). I do not want to replace the users on screen keyboard with this IME.

Alternatively I could probably pull in the source for the android default keyboard and use that.

I believe your idea to pull it in from Android open source code is the best solution. — Victor Ronin, Mar 13 '13 at 19:22
I've been working on that. The Android LatinIME source seems to be quite dependent on being compiled from within AOSP. — Halsafar, Mar 13 '13 at 20:59

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 14 '13 at 11:05

there is absolutely no way you can achieve this. Think the default IME as a separate App & you can't control that from another app. My suggestion would be to pull the LatinIME source code from AOSP & then use it to create your own IME. And trust me almost 99% (just to be safe, but I think it's 100%) of the keyboards in the PlayStore used LatinIME as their starting point. There're a lot of things to handle in a keyboard.

Android Custom IME use default on screen keyboard

1 Answers1