How to detect when soft-keyboard opened/closed?

# compose

[K Merle]

How to detect when soft-keyboard opened/closed?

[Stylianos Gakis]

What do you need this information for?
Depending on the reason you may get different answers.

[K Merle]

I wanna hide/show submit button when keyboard is opened/closed.

[K Merle]

Main reason for this is that sometimes submit button changes a for cause of the windowSoftInputMode adjustResize value that we have.

[Stylianos Gakis]

Didn’t quite get the second message, but for the first one, could you give WindowInsets.isImeVisible a try? It’s part of the new compose 1.2 inset APIs.

[K Merle]

Yea, tried it, but they seem to not provide a State , but just a Boolean value. So I should still have sort of callback to react to keyboard state change.

[Stylianos Gakis]

WindowInsets.isImeVisible is a composable function, aka you’ll always be getting the latest value. It’s kind of like State<Boolean>, but you don’t see it, you see just a Boolean, and get the observability for free since you’re inside a composable function.

[Stylianos Gakis]

I’m curious to see how you’re calling that function and why it doesn’t work for you.
It’s possibly me who’s misunderstanding something.

[K Merle]

I see. I was trying to debug it before and was getting that initial false value only.
Having WindowInsets.isImeVisible inside the composable function and opening and closing the keyboard should be enough to recompose that isImeVisible and return true when I open keyboard?

[Stylianos Gakis]

Yeah that should be the case indeed

[K Merle]

Maybe I did something wrong, I'll check that out again, tnx.

[Stylianos Gakis]

It’s here in the getter

@Suppress("OPT_IN_MARKER_ON_WRONG_TARGET")
    @ExperimentalLayoutApi
    @Composable
    @NonRestartaleComposable
    get() = WindowInsetsHolder.current().ime.isVisible

the getter is a composable function, aka you get this observability.

Take a look at this post from @Zach Klippenstein (he/him) [MOD] at the section Snapshot state: Observation

Composable functions already have this implicit observation logic wired up, which is why code like this would just work:

@Composable fun CounterButton(counter: Counter) {
  Text("${counter.label}: ${counter.value}")
}

The Compose compiler wraps the body of this CounterButton function with code that effectively observes any and all MutableStates that happen to be read inside the function.

And isVisible is in fact a State object as seen here, so it works.

That’s my understanding of all this at least, I hope I’m not giving you any wrong information here 😊

[Alejandro Rios]

I was looking the same yesterday and I've found this

[K Merle]

@Alejandro Rios Tried that example today. This example has a slight delay with a callback, and for my use case I had an issue. Button that I need to hide when keyboard opens is at the bottom-end of a screen. Opening a keyboard animates a button for a small amount of time before button disappears.

[Alex Vanyo]

Yes, @Stylianos Gakis is right, WindowInsets.isImeVisible is snapshot state backed, so it will automatically update when the keyboard is opening and closing.

Are you using WindowCompat.setDecorFitsSytemWindows(window, false) and adjustResize? (I think you mentioned adjustResize)

[K Merle]

@Alex Vanyo Yes, I'm using WindowCompat.setDecorFitsSytemWindows(window, false) , but dynamically change boolean value, depending on a navigation `route`where I'm at, and I do use adjustResize

[K Merle]

Alright, in this particular case it was set to true , and I wasn't getting the keyboard state. Setting it to false gives me value re-actively as @Stylianos Gakis suggested.

[Alex Vanyo]

Yeah, that’s unfortunate but makes sense. If the app doesn’t get as much information about it can about the insets it may not be able to know as accurately if the keyboard is open or not

[K Merle]

Thanks for clarification Alex.

[Alex Vanyo]

Your best bet will probably be to do WindowCompat.setDecorFitsSytemWindows(window, false) on that screen (handling the insets there yourself) and then getting the accurate value for WindowInsets.isImeVisible

[K Merle]

Was thinking of that, will try that tomorrow. Tnx