Hey, I am having this issue whereby Textfield does not lose focus on clicking out of it. After looki...

# compose

[Simon Wanbua]

Hey, I am having this issue whereby Textfield does not lose focus on clicking out of it. After looking around, I saw a suggestion whereby you can add pointerInput modifier with detectTapGestures to your Parent layout. However, this can get messy when reusing the textfield in multiple places. Any suggestions around this?

[Zach Klippenstein (he/him) [MOD]]

Pretty sure that’s standard Android behavior? Just checked a few standard Google apps (Photos, Home, Play Store, Chrome, Calendar) and they all have text fields that keep focus when a tapping outside them.

[Zach Klippenstein (he/him) [MOD]]

Also if you just make a basic android screen with an EditText, that’s the default behavior.

[Simon Wanbua]

I just created a simple Textfield as shown below but seems losing focus when you click outside the view is not a default behaviour in compose:

var text by remember { mutableStateOf(TextFieldValue("")) }
TextField(
    value = text,
    label = { Text(text = "Number Input Type") },
    keyboardOptions = KeyboardOptions(keyboardType = KeyboardType.Number),
    onValueChange = { it ->
        text = it
    }
)

[Zach Klippenstein (he/him) [MOD]]

Right, compose tries to match the platform behavior for stuff like this. That behavior – a text field keeping focus when clicking outside it – is the default in both cases.

[Simon Wanbua]

I lost you there. what do you imply by "both cases"?

[Zach Klippenstein (he/him) [MOD]]

The behavior of views and of compose

[Simon Wanbua]

Right, but for this case I am trying to figure out why in this case on clicking outside the textfield has no effect on the focus state

[Zach Klippenstein (he/him) [MOD]]

Because that’s not the default behavior, by design. If you want to do that, you need to somehow handle the click yourself and manually clear focus, e.g. with a click handler at the root of your view/compose hierarchy. But you’d be diverging from the standard behavior, so i’d be cautious about doing so.

[Simon Wanbua]

Got it! Thank you for the heads up