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Author Topic: IDEA: hardware keyboard emulator for Windows tablets (full Windows, that is)  (Read 5081 times)

superboyac

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As usual, I'd be willing to pay for this.  Here is the request...

Whatever MS did in it's latest updates, they have removed some option to disable completely the automatic popup of the screen keyboard (OSK).  This is very annoying to me.  I need someone to make a button that i can toggle on/off so that the OSK NEVER pops up. 

the reason why is because I use a third party bluetooth keyboard instead of the one that MS sells with the tablet (this is the Surface Pro, not the Surface RT...meaning it is running full WIndows desktop).  Before the updates, I just disabled the OSK compeltely, and put a button on my taskbar to toggle it on or off.  So, if I needed it I would trigger it manually.  MS decided it's best that the OS automatically decides when the keyboard pops up, and somewhere along the line removed this manual control that I like.  I can still turn the OSK on/off manually, but now if I put the cursor on a text field on a website, the OSK will popup, even though I'm using a bluetooth keyboard already.  SO it's annoying, I always have to close it to type.  There is not solution for this anywhere on the web that I can find.  The closest I have come is to disable the OSK completely, but then I can't bring it up manually either.  SO I need a button that turns on/off or emulates the presence of the MS official Surface Pro keyboard so it thinks the keyboard is there so that it won't popup the OSK. 

This is just my idea of the best way to do this (the emulation, that is).  I'm assuming there's no other way to program it because if there was, someone would have done it by now.  But maybe I'm wrong on that. 

MS wants the tablet to function like a smartphone...where whenever you tap on a text field, the kyboard pops up automatically.  it would be very annoying on a smartphone for it to be manual.  But on a hybrid device like the surface pro, it's a different scenario.  Also, because it's a full Windows device, you can use all sorts of accessories as far as keyboards, mice, input devices go...so this kind of automatic stuff needs an additional level of manual control for those oddball scenarios like mine (it's not that odd, btw). 

Thanks!

Deozaan

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Can't this be done by turning off Tablet mode? There's usually a shortcut for that in the Action Center.

Screenshot - 2_13_2016 , 11_36_52 PM.pngIDEA: hardware keyboard emulator for Windows tablets (full Windows, that is)

superboyac

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Can't this be done by turning off Tablet mode? There's usually a shortcut for that in the Action Center.

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I think that's only windows 10.  I'm still on 8.1.

But an update...I updated the firmware and about 1 gig of windows updates, and the problem seems to have gone away.  Thanks DZ!!