[Partial Solution][Revisiting Closed Feature Request] To forcibly show persistent keyboard at any time

[LostRuins]

Greetings. I was a long-time user of Hacker Keyboard, and one of the most essential features was the "Permanent Notification" aka "Show Keyboard at any time". Unfortunately, that feature has been broken since Android 12, and that project is abandoned, so I came here instead.

Now, I understand that you've mentioned in https://github.com/Julow/Unexpected-Keyboard/issues/71 https://github.com/Julow/Unexpected-Keyboard/issues/392 and https://github.com/Julow/Unexpected-Keyboard/issues/69 that due to the crippling of SHOW_FORCED, it is no longer possible to invoke the keyboard at will in the same way as before. However, there might be a workaround.

There is an absolutely horrible ad-infested unfree app on the play store called iGame Keyboard that achieves this by utilizing the Display over other apps permission to add a small floating button that is rendered over all other screens. This button is displayed when a notification is selected, and only has one purpose, to trigger the keyboard when pressed. I can confirm this works even when targeting Android 13 (API 33).

After installing that app, I was then able to change my active keyboard back to Unexpected-Keyboard. Then, I am able to invoke Unexpected-Keyboard anywhere by pressing the overlay floating button that opens a keyboard. I can confirm that the arrow keys in unexpected keyboard do indeed work in navigating the menus of other applications without text inputs.

Here is a screen recording of this approach:

https://github.com/Julow/Unexpected-Keyboard/assets/39025047/9eb59319-6cfa-45ec-9695-28838b27d957

Looking around I can see that on-demand keyboards are a dearly desired feature, so I think many including myself would be thrilled if you decide to implement it. I would much rather use an implementation within your program that have to deal with a third-party ad-infested workaround,

Do let me know if you need any additional information. Thanks and appreciate your hard efforts.

[LostRuins]

I went ahead and did it myself, hopefully this helps someone out there.

[JackDSRS]

Ahem...unkosher, but L ⊃ c k y P @ t c h ∃ r re: ads