Keyboard doesn't show up during password prompt on fire tv

[traverseda]

An odd request I'm sure, but when using the app via fdroid on a fire tv the virtual keyboard doesn't come up for the password field.

[gujjwal00]

Is this specific to password field, or all text boxes?

BTW, I have never tested AVNC on a TV before. How is your experience?

[traverseda]

Adding a saved connections is a work around, so honestly I'm not even sure this bug is worth fixing, but I figured I'd report it in case it effects other platforms as well.

Only happens when I try to connect via the "connect to a server" dialog at the top of the app, entering an ip/domain/url works but on the next screen the password prompt won't bring up the virtual keyboard.

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BTW, I have never tested AVNC on a TV before. How is your experience?

There are some quality of life improvement that could be made, I think probably using it on a TV is very similar to using the app with keyboard navigation on a normal android distribution. It's very common for apps not to work well using keyboard navigation so I have a shortcut that lets me bring up a virtual pointer and click on stuff. The virtual point experience is not very pleasant but it does work. Still, I think trying to make your app work well using just the arrow keys would be good for accessibility in general.

Mostly I use avnc as an alternative to apple airlpay to show pictures and stuff from my laptop, so I don't typically have a keyboard plugged in to actually control the VNC. It generally works quite well when I do plug a keyboard in though.

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A few other nitpicks, these are all things that can be worked around without actually plugging a keyboard in though.

• I can't seem to navigate to the plus in the corner using just keyboard controls, I need to start my virtual mouse hack and move a virtual cursor to the corner
• Moving to the saved servers is weird, it's like there are several hidden elements between me and the server, I need to press the down arrow several times then press the left arrow and sometimes it doesn't seem to work. Generally I can button-mash my way into having a saved server selected so I don't need to use the virtual mouse hack. (down down right left seems to work reliably)
• Something like [enhancement] use volume button to toggle keyboard etc #67 would probably be useful, I can't imagine myself using it very often but it would be nice to have since there's no other way to bring up an on screen keyboard. You could also use the play/pause button on the TV remote to do that.

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On the whole it does what I need it do with some work arounds, so I'm happy with it.

[gujjwal00]

Thanks for the details, will do some debugging tomorrow.

I did try try to improve keyboard navigation during development, but I only tested it on my phone so it is possible there are few bugs. I will look into improving the pain points when I get some time.

[traverseda]

Awesome, like I say it's over all pretty good and work-around exist for the problems that are there. I can confirm that basic functionality works fine, the only caveat is the one password screen (I think it might be selecting the saved passwords dropdown instead of the next input? Not sure) and general keyboard navigation.

[traverseda]

Also worth noting that it's obviously always in landscape mode, which might affect keyboard navigation? I'm not sure, I mostly do python web app type stuff.

[gujjwal00]

I could not find any issue with the code (its relatively simple) and Google didn't help either.

Only difference between server editor and password dialog is that password dialog uses TextInputLayout from Material Components and AutoCompleteTextView instead of a regular EditText widget. I suspect this may be the issue. I have created a debug APK which includes multiple dummy password fields created using different widgets. If loading external APK on Fire TV is not an issue for you, can you please test the following APK: app-debug.zip

Check if any of the password field brings on the virtual keyboard.

[traverseda]

I can side load no problem, doing a bunch of spring cleaning so I might not get to it for a day or two.

[traverseda]

The only one that works is password 2

[gujjwal00]

Thanks, that confirms my suspicion. It looks like virtual keyboard will only show up for EditText, and not for AutoCompleteTextView which is a subclass of EditText.

To rule out any Android specific bug I tried Android TV 9 image in Android Studio Emulator. Virtual keyboard was successfully shown for all three password fields. So it seems specific to Fire TV.

Can you please try a different virtual keyboard? If that doesn't work either, its probably a core OS bug, and we will have to come up with some sort of workaround.

[gujjwal00]

I am closing this because its not a bug in AVNC. And as you said, password can be changed in the editor dialog.
I am still keeping track of the pain points you described with AVNC on a TV.

Thank you.

[gujjwal00]

Hi @traverseda , I have finally figured out the navigation issue. Turned out that ViewPager2 was stealing focus during navigation. Hopefully, navigation will work as expected now.

Test APK: https://github.com/gujjwal00/avnc/suites/8969083439/artifacts/412379656

It will be available in next release (if you are still using AVNC 😀 ).

[sudomain]

Sorry for necrobumping this. I found this because I'm looking to have avnc on an android TV. @traverseda can you explain your virtual mouse trick? Is it an app?