Database Users

Can't for the life of me turn of default keyboard

I got in on the Swype beta a week or so ago and love the product (although ShapeWriter has some strong points too).
Over the weekend I had to go back to the default keyboard because Swype doesn't seem to play well with my RDP application.
Now I can't turn Swype back on! I went to Settings -> Language & Keyboard and it shows Swype enabled.
The other strange thing is where the default keyboard used to show the little "Cog" button for options, it now shows a microphone. Don't know how else to get back to Swype. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling, but that didn't help. I can't get either of my optional keyboards to work now???

you need to long press on an input box, and wait for the popup, then select input method, then swype.

nomoclutch said:
I got in on the Swype beta a week or so ago and love the product (although ShapeWriter has some strong points too).
Over the weekend I had to go back to the default keyboard because Swype doesn't seem to play well with my RDP application.
Now I can't turn Swype back on! I went to Settings -> Language & Keyboard and it shows Swype enabled.
The other strange thing is where the default keyboard used to show the little "Cog" button for options, it now shows a microphone. Don't know how else to get back to Swype. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling, but that didn't help. I can't get either of my optional keyboards to work now???
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Find and input box(where you can type stuff into), hold your finger down on it until the menu appears, at the bottom will be "Input Method", select that and you will see the options.

Duh - thank you guys!!!
too much 4th of July party for me ...

I thought Swype beta ended.
edit: nvm i think i figured it out, will install it on my replacement Evo when I get home.

No it's available for everybody now. The beta, that is.

How to change default onscreen keyboard?

I'm install alternate onscreen keyboard, but can't shut down defautl keyboard. It suppress alternate by priority in input methods list.

Only solution i can think of is to root your phone and get Startup Manager and turn it off in there, I did.

Just press and hold the textbox or writing area, there you change "input method" to swype or samsung keyboard.

If I understand it right, OP wants the chosen input method to stick, so that it do not go back to a different one during soft reset. I'm interested in the solution too. I do not want to remove the default stock keyboard though, as I still want it in some situation.

If I go to Settings, Locale and Text and tick the newly installed keyboard (in my case the Droid X keyboard), then press and hold in an input area and select Input Options and use the new keyboard it stays the default keyboard, even after a soft reset.
If I then change back to the default keyboard by pressing and holding in an input area and selecting the Samsung Keypad, THAT will then stay as the default keypad, even after a soft reset.
The same works for the HTC_IME.
So I fail to see what the problem is.
The main annoyance I have is that neither the Droid X nor HTC_IME have a navigational arrows keyboard like the stock keyboard does. WHY WHY WHY did Samsung not make that menu button an OPTICAL TRACKPAD? They managed it on the Omnia and other smartphones. Without this feature, despite my love of this phone, I am falling out of love with this handset.

leoni1980 said:
If I go to Settings, Locale and Text and tick the newly installed keyboard (in my case the Droid X keyboard), then press and hold in an input area and select Input Options and use the new keyboard it stays the default keyboard, even after a soft reset.
If I then change back to the default keyboard by pressing and holding in an input area and selecting the Samsung Keypad, THAT will then stay as the default keypad, even after a soft reset.
The same works for the HTC_IME.
So I fail to see what the problem is.
The main annoyance I have is that neither the Droid X nor HTC_IME have a navigational arrows keyboard like the stock keyboard does. WHY WHY WHY did Samsung not make that menu button an OPTICAL TRACKPAD? They managed it on the Omnia and other smartphones. Without this feature, despite my love of this phone, I am falling out of love with this handset.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey, you're right! It does stick. My bad.
Wow, Droid X and HTC_IME must be so good, that you must find it so difficult to give up. I must try them.

I wouldn't bother with HTC iME if I were you: Droid X keyboard is head and shoulders above anything else out there as it uses multitouch to bolster its already rather solid prediction algorithms. for me it is as good as the iphone keyboard. I have REALLY tried to like Swype but still find it clunky in instances when I need to input numbers and letters or very specific words, and I cant swype a long word as quickly as i can tap out the first few letters of a long word and allow word prediction to finish it for me.
As for the default keyboard....well it has some nice features but I find myself getting terribly irritated by it when I really need it to work.
Hi Eaglesteve by the way. remember our many conversations in the HTC Advantage forums? I hope you've found a better device since then! it's amazing how things have moved on since then.

leoni1980 said:
I wouldn't bother with HTC iME if I were you: Droid X keyboard is head and shoulders above anything else out there as it uses multitouch to bolster its already rather solid prediction algorithms. for me it is as good as the iphone keyboard. I have REALLY tried to like Swype but still find it clunky in instances when I need to input numbers and letters or very specific words, and I cant swype a long word as quickly as i can tap out the first few letters of a long word and allow word prediction to finish it for me.
As for the default keyboard....well it has some nice features but I find myself getting terribly irritated by it when I really need it to work.
Hi Eaglesteve by the way. remember our many conversations in the HTC Advantage forums? I hope you've found a better device since then! it's amazing how things have moved on since then.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for sharing your thoughts Leoni. Yes, iPhone keyboard is hard to beat. I'll give Droid X keyboard a go then.
Yes, those days on the HTC advantage forum is memorable for me, and I enjoyed the friendship and conversations with folks there. Yes, technology has really changed within a very short time, and I love it. Glad to be living in this generation. You're far more frequent phone changer than I have been, I noticed, almost never missing out on any device. I think as a result you're one of the most open minded and unbiased persons when making comparisons between them, and I enjoy reading your comments all the time.

Hey Leoni, after installing Droid X keyboard, it is not showing up when I go to setting, locale. When I click on the pass-dx2200 icon, I was given the choice of installing PandaHome2, which I did, although I hate the home screen now.
Is there a special procedure to follow before Droid X keyboard would appear on the setting for it to be ticked?

[Q] [rant] Problem with Virtuous Unity and Swype

Today I spent 30 minutes logging into a website. It's Swype that was messing me up, I would type in "gromacs" and it would change to "grimace" I don't understand why it would do that, and unlike other proper software with autocorrect that can recognize when you want it to go away, I can delete it, type in "gromacs" again and it simply changes my input to "grimace" again! Stupid piece of garbage! So I uninstalled Swype. Then I was left with a bleeping Arabic keyboard, wtf Virtuous Unity?
I went to manage applications, and I cannot uninstall this Arabic keyboard that I will never use. Why? Why is the option for silent mode gone from the drop down menu? Yes I know that I can get Android to do what I want with 2 hours of changing various settings, but the only reason I use Virtuous Unity over CyanogenMod is because there is less to configure and it was how I liked it out of the box. How can I get the silent mode setting back? How can I completely remove autocorrect and suggest functionality from my phone? How can completely remove this "Arabic" keyboard from my phone while keeping (what's left of) Virtuous Unity?

im pretty sure your arabic keyboard is just a normal keyboard with the language setting on arabic, and swype sucks dont use it haha. i dont use virtuous unity so i wouldnt know how to activate your silent setting thing

gromacs said:
Today I spent 30 minutes logging into a website. It's Swype that was messing me up, I would type in "gromacs" and it would change to "grimace" I don't understand why it would do that, and unlike other proper software with autocorrect that can recognize when you want it to go away, I can delete it, type in "gromacs" again and it simply changes my input to "grimace" again! Stupid piece of garbage! So I uninstalled Swype. Then I was left with a bleeping Arabic keyboard, wtf Virtuous Unity?
I went to manage applications, and I cannot uninstall this Arabic keyboard that I will never use. Why? Why is the option for silent mode gone from the drop down menu? Yes I know that I can get Android to do what I want with 2 hours of changing various settings, but the only reason I use Virtuous Unity over CyanogenMod is because there is less to configure and it was how I liked it out of the box. How can I get the silent mode setting back? How can I completely remove autocorrect and suggest functionality from my phone? How can completely remove this "Arabic" keyboard from my phone while keeping (what's left of) Virtuous Unity?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Android has a section in the settings called "Language & keyboard". Try looking there to change your keyboard settings. Also, to change which keyboard you use, long press any text input field and choose "input method". Then choose "touch input" instead of "Arabic keyboard". Viola, a regular keyboard.
I actually posted this same info for someone else less than a month ago and included screen shots, do a search for "HTC keyboard" the thread title also included some way of referring to CM7.
Last thing, the HTC keyboard has a library where you can add your own words to it. The default library doesn't contain expletives and will sub them for similar words. So, you can add gromacs to the library to avoid your another rant like the one above about swype. Swype can also be taught words too.
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App

If you actually looked at your keyboard for more than 30 seconds while typing you would find that right above the actual keys is a list of suggestions that are dynamically displayed, the first of those options is what you have currently typed, not only does selecting that avoid your issue, it saves it in your personal dictionary. ..

Are we blaming the tool instead of the user?
Just because you were using the Swype keyboard didn't mean you were obligated to make swiping motions. If you had typed in your username the usual way by tapping, you get what darinmc described above with the ability to save what you typed to your dictionary. You could also ignore the suggestions completely and keep typing. In fact, you could tap on the Swype keyboard all the time instead of swiping. Not only that, but you can turn off word suggestion and auto-correction in Swype's settings! I'm sorry, but getting stuck on a login screen for half an hour and then blaming Swype is classic PEBKAC. Period.
Who cares about the Arabic keyboard? Unless that's your only available input method now, I could think of several apps that could be uninstalled first before I would come anywhere close to caring about the Arabic keyboard.

Thanks for the help guys, after I recovered from my raging at such terrible mechanics of this software I went back and dug through some more settings. I did add gromacs to the dictionary, and now I'm able to swype gromacs and expletives. The suggest and autocorrect settings were in the Swype menu, not the android keyboard menu which is why swype still behaved like that after I changed the android keyboard settings.
Snakecharmed yes that's what I did, and as soon as I type out a word the swype auto-screwup would kick in and change the word. I don't think any ROM should come with any keyboard other than standard US. If they want to throw in arab, why not throw in chinese as well? My friend wants a french keyboard. The stranger on the street wants a weddings keyboard. See where I'm getting at? Maybe the guy who created VU uses the arab keyboard, idk.
I'm sorry, not Peroid. A user unable to figure out messy software settings means the software is bad, not the user. This is not PEBKAC, this is PEBAndroid-and-Swype

How did you even get Swype in the first place? Swype isn't supposed to come with Virtuous Unity. I had to install Swype separately by extracting the files from a backup of the Espresso Gingerbread ROM and then pushing the files to the phone after Virtuous Unity was installed. Along with the absence or omission of the Touch Input keyboard as one of your keyboard options in your original post, what you've described does not sound like the stock settings for Virtuous Unity at all and something isn't adding up.
I thought you uninstalled Swype after your previous blowup anyway. How and why are you still using it?
I feel that my point stands. I didn't know what Swype was when I first got this phone, so I didn't swipe. I tapped with the Swype keyboard, didn't notice anything different from any other keyboard, and thus never had any reason to blame auto-correct resulting from swiping because auto-correct is only supposed to happen when you swipe and not when you tap.
Ultimately though, if you have everything working the way you want it to now, then that's all that matters.

I was just trying to get you back to the HTC keyboard and set it up. I hate swype. I know I could get used to it if I use it, but I don't like how the swiping action works. My hand blocks the keyboard off when swiping so I have to pause and maneuver my hand so i can figure out the direct line to the next letter without lifting my finger.
And the auto correct function does work when tapping. It messed me up when I tried logging in gmail to setup the phone when i first bought it.
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App

The only thing I can possibly think of is that there were different default behaviors for different versions of Swype. I never had an issue with Swype 3.7 that comes with the Espresso Gingerbread ROM and that's what I'm using now. I do know that the older version of Swype that was on the stock Espresso Froyo ROM was more cumbersome, but I hardly used it because I was busy rooting and flashing a new ROM at that point. However, neither version should be in the install package for Virtuous Unity or else this thread wouldn't need to exist.
Either way, if the input functions as expected for the OP now regardless of the keyboard of choice, then we can move on because if it works, it works.

[TUT] How to Enable Swiftkey on HDX

The Keyboard Settings on HDX is hard coded for the Kindle Fire OS keyboard, but alternative keyboards *can* be loaded or sideloaded into a very confusing menu. This is how you get Swiftkey to work.
The steps should work for other keyboards as well. I've gotten it to work with Fleksy and Google Keyboard. YMMV.
1) Download and install Swiftkey to your HDX through Google Play Store (if you have hacked it onto your device), Amazon App Store, Aptoide or 1Mobile, or even sideload it. However you do it, install it.
2) Once you got it installed, run the Swiftkey app, which is also the installer. Keep going as far as you can until it tries to trigger the settings and so on. It probably will bring up Keyboard Settings, and you'll be utterly lost here.
3) Bring down notification, and go into settings (far right button, usually)
4) Go down to Language & Keyboard and tap it
5) Tap on "Keyboard Language" (should be 3rd one down)
6) Keep scrolling down the languages (and you'll see TONS) until you finally find Swiftkey, make sure it has a checkmark (if not, add it now).
Optional: Also enable any other keyboard you may have loaded. Beware that some keyboards appear here actually as a language. For example, Google Keyboard appears as "English (US)" if you have that installed, though Fleksy appears as itself.
7) Once you have checked all the keyboards you want to enable, scroll back to top
8) Tap "Default language", which is first choice, and you should get a pop-up of all the different keyboards/languages you enabled, and among them should be Swiftkey (or Flesky or whatever keyboard you put a check mark on in step 6) Pick your favorite keyboard now.
9) Hit BACK to go back to "Language & Keyboard" screen
10) Tap "Keyboard Settings" (4th choice?) If you had previously selected Swiftkey, this should bring up Swiftkey Settings, or perhaps the installer if you have not completed the steps like Sign into Google Plus to enable CloudSync. Complete any remaining steps in the installer.
Your new soft keyboard is now active! Enjoy!

I've actually done this several times using the swiftkey apk from my phone extracted from a titanium backup. Every time I have tried it though the nav bar on the bottom (portrait mode) or right(landscape) has covered part of the keyboard making it unusable. I may have missed it in one of the other threads but what needs to be done to fix this? Having a working swiftkey would be great as the stock keyboard is really slow on long press combos like numbers and sometimes doesn't even recognize the first one.

Indeed it's a bit annoying... The best I've been able to achieve is to set the keyboard size to the largest one and also select the extended keyboard option so that most keys are on top of the space bar... But still we need a fix on this one and I think the problem is on swiftkey 's side not recognizing the fireos bar...

Swiftkey has an undock setting. I activated that and just moved the whole keyboard up the screen further. Works fine for me.
Rich

dorpmuller said:
Swiftkey has an undock setting. I activated that and just moved the whole keyboard up the screen further. Works fine for me.
Rich
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Where is this option located? I can't seem to find it.
*edit* Nvm, found it, haven't used Swiftkey in ages so forgot where the swiftkey icon was. For those unfamiliar with swiftkey, it's the second one from the bottom left. You can use this video as reference:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVeoy51IkME

glimmer00 said:
I've actually done this several times using the swiftkey apk from my phone extracted from a titanium backup. Every time I have tried it though the nav bar on the bottom (portrait mode) or right(landscape) has covered part of the keyboard making it unusable. I may have missed it in one of the other threads but what needs to be done to fix this? Having a working swiftkey would be great as the stock keyboard is really slow on long press combos like numbers and sometimes doesn't even recognize the first one.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Undock is your only option. It's easy in landscape, but almost impossible in portrait mode. You'll have to guess where's the swiftkey button and from there, undock.
I was about to suggest "arrow keys" but I realized Swiftkey hides the arrow key option on the tablets (WHY!?!?!?!)

kschang said:
Undock is your only option. It's easy in landscape, but almost impossible in portrait mode. You'll have to guess where's the swiftkey button and from there, undock.
I was about to suggest "arrow keys" but I realized Swiftkey hides the arrow key option on the tablets (WHY!?!?!?!)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Indeed I also thought of activating the arrow keys just to see it's not an option on tablets...
I don't like the undocking option as sometimes the undocked keyboard appears on top of the text field you're trying to type in, effectively blocking your view of the typed text...

Thanks for this post! I had really missed the language recognition ability of SwiftKey.
I haven't had any of the above problems due to the nav-bar covering the keyboard. Unless I update this post, you can assume I'm one happy guy
I installed Swiftkey from the 1Mobile appstore on a non-rooted device (Thor 7 inch, Kindle OS 4.5.5). There were 6 versions of Swiftkey available to install. The only version that worked for me was "Swiftkey Tablet Free," Version 4.2.1.202.

Software behind the hardware keyboard

So I have found the keyboard to be somewhat fraustrating. Not because it is virtual, but because of the software behind it.
First of all, it is rather strange that you cannot set more than one keybaord. Essentially, the device can have two keyboards that you might regularly swap between: the hardware keyboard and the one screen keyboard one might use while in tablet mode. The hardware keyboard uses the autocorrect of the keyboard you have set as your software keyboard. You cannot set seperate keyboard engines for the hardware and software keyboard.
As I said, the autocorrect/engine behind the hardware keyboard is dependant on your choice of software keybaord. However, as far as I can tell, only the defualt TouchPal keyboard provides any autocorrect for the hardware keybaord. The stock android keyboard offers no autocorrect with the hardware keyboard.
On a related note, TouchPal is awful. The autocorrect works pretty badly and is basically very annoying to use. I won't bore you with the details, but things like autocorrecting to a new word when you go back to edit a mistake. This makes it almost unusable.
Also the touch pad is very bad. No two funger scrolling means that again, it is pretty much useless.
I think the Yoga Book is a great device in most respects. Its intersting that all of these problems relate to the software and could potentially be fixed by Lenovo or there may even be fixes out there now.
Has anyone found any solutions to these problems? Thanks, Liam

I completely agree with you and am having the same frustration with the software behind the keyboard. So far the best solution I have found is to use SwiftKey or Swiftkey Beta (not sure which is best yet). With a bit of tweaking you can get decent auto complete and auto correct using both the halo and on screen keyboard. Much better than Touchpal at least. A couple of issues I have found using Swiftkey and halo keyboard: 1) auto complete seems to turn off when resuming from sleep mode (tapping the keyboard button on the top row reactivates it) 2) in WhatsApp Tablet app, after pressing Enter to send a message, the next message gets double words - I. E. Auto correct adds to what you type, doesn't replace it.

I can confirm that switching to SwiftKey makes the hardware keyboard usable! I'm actually using the keyboard to type this now. Naturally, I'm making tons of mistakes but it is catching and correcting almost all of them!
Can confirm that SwiftKey easily switches between physical keyboard and on-screen keyboard when the physical keyboard is toggled on and off.
If anyone is still using the default software keyboard, switch now!!!

Thanks for the tip! This makes a big difference! Have either of you found a way to get auto capitalise to work? The setting is enabled but it doesn't do anythig.

My issue with SwiftKey is that there is no good ways to select a suggested word. You always have to click with your finger on the screen which completely ruins ten finger typing for my.
So I ended up with disabled word correction as it's faster to remove some mistyped words and type again, than to click on the screen.
How do you handle suggestions made by SwiftKey?

faeArai said:
My issue with SwiftKey is that there is no good ways to select a suggested word. You always have to click with your finger on the screen which completely ruins ten finger typing for my.
So I ended up with disabled word correction as it's faster to remove some mistyped words and type again, than to click on the screen.
How do you handle suggestions made by SwiftKey?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have found that SwiftKey enters the main suggested word when I press space. This is good for most of the time, but annoying when:
-I want to select a suggestion that is not the main suggested word (particularly a new word that it doesn't recognise)
-I want to add punctuation directly after the main suggested word (here, because I input the punctuation rather than pressing space, the suggested word is not entered)
I have certainly found using SwiftKey to be the best experience. It's quite a passive autocorrect that doesn't get in the way too much. I got so sick of TouchPal which really gets in your face with its incorrect predictions.
But still there is a lot of room for improvement. It's such a shame that it's terrible software that lets down this keyboard. In particular I don't understand why:
- Some keyboards (like the Google Keyboard) don't offer any correction or prediction when enabled. Does Android maybe treat the Halo keyboard as an external keyboard (which I suppose you wouldn't want predictive features for)?
- Keyboards that do offer prediction don't seem to respond to changes to their settings (I can't get SwiftKey to auto capitalise the first letter of a sentence for example). @thespinner02 mentioned tweaking with SwiftKey settings- I assume they meant for the onscreen keyboard because these settings don't do anything for the Halo keybaord.
I wonder whether there is a keyboard out there in the Play Store that works better with the Yoga Book. I'll try a few and let you guys know if I find one.

I tried several solutions but couldn't find anything good. Hardware keyboards are not that common on Android platform, I guess.

Even using Swiftkey I sometimes get different results depending on the app being used. Auto capitalise is working OK for me, in Word for example.
There are specific options in Swiftkey for Physical Keyboard: in settings, Typing, Voice & Other Input. In Physical keyboard section I have Autocorrect and Auto capitalize on. Everything else off.

thespinner02 said:
Even using Swiftkey I sometimes get different results depending on the app being used. Auto capitalise is working OK for me, in Word for example.
There are specific options in Swiftkey for Physical Keyboard: in settings, Typing, Voice & Other Input. In Physical keyboard section I have Autocorrect and Auto capitalize on. Everything else off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks! I didn't notice that- smart spacing etc makes a massive difference!
Pretty much my only problem with SwiftKey now is that it sometimes creates its own weird textbook instead of typing directly into the text field. But that's not a massive problem.
Also I sometimes accidentally change input method. Maybe I'm using a keyboard shortcut by mistake?

thespinner02 said:
Even using Swiftkey I sometimes get different results depending on the app being used. Auto capitalise is working OK for me, in Word for example.
There are specific options in Swiftkey for Physical Keyboard: in settings, Typing, Voice & Other Input. In Physical keyboard section I have Autocorrect and Auto capitalize on. Everything else off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In settings for hardware keyword I get no harder key found?
Went into Swift settings in onscreen. How to get settings for Halo?

With Yoga Book in laptop mode. Settings / Language & input / SwiftKey Keyboard / Typing / Voice & Other Input

You also need to make sure 'show input method' is not enabled in the keyboard settings/selector popup.
Does anyone else experience a problem with SwiftKey where in some text fields your text goes into a little popup text box at the bottom of the screen as well as the intended text field? And then to get rid of the popup text box you have to tap 'next'. This occurs in the Facebook messenger app for example.
Any way to disable it?
It seems to do this when the text field is small, but other keyboards just expend the text field as you type. The popup text box it creates doesn't expand anyway, so it doesn't offer extra functionality and is just an annoyance.