Automatically initiating the keyboard in Windows Tablet when tap on the text field

Question

I developed a desktop application using Winforms. When I installed the application on a Windows 8.1 Tablet the application works just fine but the only issue that I'm facing is that the keyboard doesn't automatically appear when I tap on a text fields. Instead, I have to tap or click the Touch keyboard icon on the right side of the taskbar to make it happen.

Is there some way to make it work? Because it's not good for user experience.

Answer 1

You can find the answer here:

How to make Windows 8 tablet open the on-screen-keyboard when an input field gets focus?

There are also quite a few other threads out there regarding this topic.

And from my own personal experience:

private void OpenOnScreenKeyboard()
{   
    Process.Start(@"C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\ink\TabTip.exe");
}

private void CloseOnScreenKeyboard()
{   
    foreach (var process in Process.GetProcessesByName("TabTip"))
    {
        process.Kill(); // Kill any previous processes running
    }
}

You will likely only need the last line from the above OpenPenInput() method. I also edited the registry so the handwriting panel would be the displayed when the keyboard was opened. But that part only works in Windows 8.1 and below. I haven't tried getting it to work in Win10. The last line of OpenPenInput() should be all that you need.