Is there any javascript event fired when the on-screen keyboard on mobile safari or chrome opens?

Question

I try to react to the on-screen keyboard in our web applications. Unfortunately there are some things complicating this:

First of all, the application has to run equally on mobile platforms (tablets) and desktops. Additionally scrolling the document/body is forbidden and to spice things up even more, landscape mode is mandatory on tablets.

So, if someone selects any input field, the on-screen keyboard opens up and blocks the sight on half of the page, therefor some inputs become invisible and I need to change that.

Unfortunately it seems, there is no event fired at all, which indicates, that half of the application just became invisible. I already checked scroll and resize events, but they didn't fire, too.

Of course, I could always react somehow as soon as I'm sure to be on a tablet. Probably 95% of the users will not attach a hardware keyboard anyway. But isn't there any cleaner way?

Answer 1

On Android (sorry iOS), the resize event will fire when the keyboard resizes your page. Add an onresize event handler on your window and adjust the scrolling as needed.

Answer 2

Did you try the focus and blur event?

So you can lock the min-height of the form (or other parent element) with a class when keyboard appears, and so the user can scroll touching screen when a input is selected.

I was looking for a similar issue, and this trick resolves my case. ✌

*** EDIT ****

As @mac used and exemplified us in the comment below

Answer 3

Unfortunately the answer here is a clear: NO. There are some related questions here with some further information and tricks:

screen styling when virtual keyboard is active

iPad Web App: Detect Virtual Keyboard Using JavaScript in Safari?

Android/iPhone webkit, event triggered on keyboard pop?

Answer 4

I have an idea. If you know the screen is in a mobile size, you can detect when an input or textarea has the focusin and focusout event fired. If thats the case, the keyboard is probably opened.

jQuery example

$('input[type="text"], input[type="number"], input[type="password"], input[type="email"], input[type="tel"], input[type="search"], input[type="url"], textarea')
  .on('focusin', function (){
    if(window.innerWidth < 800){
      // do stuff on keyboard opened...
    }
  })
  .on('focusout', function (){
    if(window.innerWidth < 800){
      // revert changes on keyboard closed...
    }
  });

Or using the height with any input type

let initHeight = window.innerHeight;

$('input, textarea')
  .on('focusin', function (){
    if(window.innerHeight < initHeight && window.innerWidth < 800){
      // do stuff on keyboard opened...
    }
  })
  .on('focusout', function (){
    if(window.innerWidth < 800){
      initHeight = window.innerHeight; // ensure initHeight is still accurate
      // revert changes on keyboard closed...
    }
  });