Set the focus on a textbox in xaml wpf

Question

Despite some posts on this forum and others i cannot find something that tells me how to set the focus on a TextBox.

I have a userControl with many labels and textBoxes. When the form is loaded I want the a particular textBox to have the focus.

I have set the tabIndex but that didn't seem to work.

Any suggestions?

Possible duplicate of [WPF and initial focus](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/817610/wpf-and-initial-focus) — Ruben Bartelink, Jun 01 '16 at 08:30

score 189 · Accepted Answer · answered May 20 '10 at 09:04

189

You can use the FocusManager.FocusedElement attached property for this purpose. Here's a piece of code that set the focus to TxtB by default.

<StackPanel Orientation="Vertical" FocusManager.FocusedElement="{Binding ElementName=TxtB}">
    <TextBox x:Name="TxtA" Text="A" />
    <TextBox x:Name="TxtB" Text="B" />
</StackPanel>

You can also use TxtB.Focus() in your code-behind if you don't want to do this in XAML.

answered May 20 '10 at 09:04

Julien Lebosquain

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@TarkaDaal: the "it didn't work for me" comment could be a little more elaborated. It's probably another control stealing the focus. When the focus war begins in WPF, things tend to go naughty! Please verify your controls, and where you are currently in the visual tree (for example, inside a ComboBox template, this will have no effect, and there are numerous other cases like this). If you can't find the stealer, use a behavior or code-behind to set the focus to the control when its loaded. – Julien Lebosquain Jan 24 '13 at 19:08
@JulienLebosquain: It was a pretty simple control, two buttons and a TextBox within a Grid (which is where I put the `FocusManager` stuff). In the end, I did it in the code-behind. – TarkaDaal Jan 25 '13 at 08:44
The member "FocusedElement" is not recognized or is not accessible. :( https://plus.google.com/photos/+HendyIrawan/albums/5990385944888867505/5991104640269523954 – Hendy Irawan Mar 15 '14 at 19:46
@HendyIrawan Is that a Silverlight project, maybe? – MojoFilter May 19 '14 at 13:14
@MojoFilter it's a Windows Phone 8 WPF project – Hendy Irawan May 20 '14 at 16:08
1

I'm using WPF 4.5. FocusManager.FocusedElement does absolutely nothing. Am I missing something? – Jordan Jan 14 '15 at 16:48
There seems to be a minor issue if the stackpanel is inside a TreeView, but this worked fine for our NuGet Package Explorer customisation. Thanks :) – iCollect.it Ltd Jul 27 '15 at 11:24
Works for me in a Grid. – MetalMikester Sep 01 '16 at 13:46
In my case this it doesn't work, nor does the solution from Max work. I see the TextBox focused but typing doesn't work until i click on the TextBox. It might have to do with the fact that I change the visibility of the container of the TextBox. – r41n Nov 30 '16 at 15:29
(+1) Thanks. As a note, it works when using FocusManager.FocusedElement in a control like StackPanel, Grid etc. but does not work when I used it in the Window properties. But this is not a problem. – Mustafa Özçetin Dec 23 '22 at 06:53

score 27 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 12 '13 at 13:35

27

You can apply this property directly on the TextBox :

<TextBox Text="{Binding MyText}" FocusManager.FocusedElement="{Binding RelativeSource={RelativeSource Self}}"/>

answered Apr 12 '13 at 13:35

Max

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Didn't work for me, setting FocusManager.FocusedElement="{Binding ElementName=TxtB}" on the container did work – Grant Dec 20 '13 at 02:09
1

Works like a charm and does not require any namings. – Simon Mattes Apr 17 '15 at 14:12
1

Did not work for me as well. Are we missing something? – BrunoLM Jul 05 '15 at 16:49
I don't know why this Binding doesn't work for some people or project. Maybe asking a new question with a code sample could be interesting. – Max Jul 22 '15 at 16:18
1

Didn't work for me either. Suggestion by Julien Lebosquain work. – Crypt32 Aug 14 '16 at 12:34
2

Doesn't work for me either. All other methods proposed also not working. This problem must be elementary and should be solvable eeeasily.. That's why many ppl don't like wpf. – IgorStack May 06 '17 at 02:39
Could you please explain why does this binding work? Thanks! – Yola Mar 29 '19 at 09:31
Hello from 2020! The suggestion doesn't work for me either. – Erik Knowles Oct 14 '20 at 23:29

score 7 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 13 '17 at 21:23

I am new to using WPF and reading through the above examples I had a similar experience trying set the focus to a textbox using the xaml code examples given, i.e. all the examples above didn't work.

What I found was I had to place the FocusManager.FocusElement in the page element. I assume this would probably work as well if you used a Window as the parent element. Anyway, here is the code that worked for me.

 <Page x:Class="NameOfYourClass"
  xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
  xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
  xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" 
  xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" 
  mc:Ignorable="d"
  Title="Title" 
  Height="720"
  Width="915"
  Background="white"
  Loaded="pgLoaded"
  FocusManager.FocusedElement="{Binding ElementName=NameOfYourTextBox}">

  <!-- Create child elements here. -->

  </Page>

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 05 '20 at 12:07

I have a TextBox inside a Grid inside a DataTemplate which I want to have keyboard focus when it becomes visible. I also found that

<DataTemplate x:Key="DistanceView" DataType="{x:Type vm:ROI}">
    <Grid FocusManager.FocusedElement="{Binding ElementName=tbDistance}">
        <TextBox x:Name="tbDistance" Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row="1" VerticalAlignment="Bottom"/>
    </Grid>
</DataTemplate>

did not work for me.

However when I call Focus() in the parent ContentControl

private void ContentControl_IsVisibleChanged(object sender, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
{
    if ((sender as ContentControl).IsVisible)
    {
        (sender as ContentControl).Focus();
    }
}

it starts to work and the caret is visible in the TextBox. I think the FocusScope has to be given focus for the FocusManager.FocusedElement property to have any effect.

Jerry

Nice solution. This is what I had to do as none of the other answer methods seemed to work. In my case I had a set of tabbed forms, and needed to set the focus when a tab became visible. — Tim Holt, Apr 22 '21 at 19:44

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Jan 26 '19 at 15:26

1

From experimenting around, the xaml solution

FocusManager.FocusedElement="{Binding ElementName=yourElement}"

seems to work best when you place it in the highest element in the window hierarchy (usually Window, or the Grid you place everything else in)

answered Jan 26 '19 at 15:26

Tan Jing Yuan

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Interesting observation. Maybe this can explain why there are so many other failures reported here. – Bent Tranberg Feb 07 '22 at 06:30

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Apr 08 '20 at 12:50

Usage: local:FocusManager.FocusOnLoad="True"

    public class FocusManager
    {
        public static readonly DependencyProperty FocusOnLoad = DependencyProperty.RegisterAttached(
            "FocusOnLoad",
            typeof(bool),
            typeof(FocusManager),
            new UIPropertyMetadata(false, new PropertyChangedCallback(OnValueChanged))
            );

        private static void OnValueChanged(DependencyObject sender, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
        {
            if (!(sender is Control control))
                return;

            if ((bool) e.NewValue == false)
                return;

            control.Loaded += (s, e) => control.Focus();
        }

        public static bool GetFocusOnLoad(DependencyObject d) => (bool) d.GetValue(FocusOnLoad);

        public static void SetFocusOnLoad(DependencyObject d, bool value) => d.SetValue(FocusOnLoad, value);
    }

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Jun 08 '16 at 19:48

0

FocusManager was not in intellisense and this confused me a bit. I just typed the entire attribute and it worked.

FocusManager.FocusedElement="{Binding ElementName=MyTextBox}"

Microsoft Visual Studio Enterprise 2015 version 14.0.23107.0/C#/WPF

answered Jun 08 '16 at 19:48

icernos

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score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Nov 09 '16 at 23:01

For completeness, there is also a way to handle this from code behind (e.g. in the case of controls that, for whatever reason, are created dynamically and don't exist in XAML). Attach a handler to the window's Loaded event and then use the ".Focus()" method of the control you want. Bare-bones example below.

public class MyWindow
{
    private VisualCollection controls;
    private TextBox textBox;

    // constructor
    public MyWindow()
    {
        controls = new VisualCollection(this);
        textBox = new TextBox();
        controls.Add(textBox);

        Loaded += window_Loaded;
    }

    private void window_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
    {
        textBox.Focus();
    }
}

This does work, but bear in mind that the event never gets unhooked, which will prevent the class from being disposed, which is a potential memory leak. — Dave, Feb 04 '22 at 12:46
(To be correct I should have said "garbage collected" not "disposed") — Dave, Feb 04 '22 at 14:23

score -1 · Answer 9 · edited Oct 31 '14 at 12:15

-1

bind the element you want to point the focus in as

FocusManager.FocusedElement= "{Binding ElementName= Comobox1}"

in grid or groupbox etc

edited Oct 31 '14 at 12:15

Hamad

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answered Oct 31 '14 at 11:57

Sufian Bashir

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Uhh yeah, thanks for giving the same answer everyone else did ... 4 years later... – Adam Plocher Jan 19 '15 at 12:20
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@AdamPlocher Nice one, you put Sulfian off Stack Overflow permanently. A "Welcome to Stack overflow" message would have been more appropriate. – Contango Feb 25 '15 at 16:55
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@Contango: "Last seen `Nov 11 '14`". He was *long gone* before Adam posted his comment :) – iCollect.it Ltd Jul 27 '15 at 11:08
Voting down because it is a duplicate of the accepted and most upvoted answer, so it would be better if this disappears. – Bent Tranberg Feb 07 '22 at 06:26

score -1 · Answer 10 · answered Feb 04 '22 at 14:22

Further to my comment on Feb 04 '22, I solved it this way:

In the UserControl definitionin the XAML add a Loaded event handler. (pressing tab after Loaded= will automatically add an event handler to the code behind)

Then edit the event handler in the code behind:

private void UserControl_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
    expressionTextBox.Focus();
}

I'm hoping that WPF is clever enough to handle th unhooking of the evnt at some point, allowing the class to be garbage collected and not give rise to memory leaks, but I don't know. I'd be interested in any comments on that.

Set the focus on a textbox in xaml wpf

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