How enable physical keyboard on Emulator in Android Studio? (Used to work)

Question

I'm not sure what changed but the physical keyboard from my computer no longer works for the emulator (running kitkat in Nexus 5, x86). When i look in AVD at the device's advanced settings, there's nothing for a hardware keyboard. Where is this setting?

Merimerida

Answer 1

Find the emulator's configuration in your home directory:

//Located in:
~/.android/avd/<The_Device_Name>/config.ini

For example, on the Nexus 5 (created by Android Studio), it was:

~/.android/avd/Nexus5.avd/config.ini

Change the below setting to be:

hw.keyboard=yes

Merimerida

Related: D'pad Is disabled in emulator. Modified as hw.dPad=yes to test accessibility feature with up, down, left , right arrow keys. – Devaluate

Can this be set via adb shell or adbmanager command line? – Goldsworthy

Also needed to restart the emulator afterward for the setting to be picked up. Anyone know if there's a way to use the new config without restarting emulator? – Clan

Answer 2

In the advanced settings of a virtual device in Android Studio 1.0.2 AVD Manager, there is actually a checkbox that allows to enable keyboard input without editing the config.ini by hand.

Tools → Android → AVD Manager → pencil icon (shown in picture) → Show Advanced Settings (scroll to bottom) → Enable Keyboard Input

Rashad

Note, you have to scroll down to the bottom of the Advanced Settings. "Enabled keyboard input" is the LAST ITEM. It took me several minutes to realize the advanced settings pane was much larger than it first appeared. – Gipps

For me, it's enabled and still I can't type inside SOME EditText fields. – Armandarmanda

IMPORTANT : Scroll to Bottom :) – Sure

Answer 3

Open and Navigate to Tools → Android → AVD Manager → Edit -> pencil icon)

Click on Show Advanced settings and scroll down and you can see the option Enable Keyboard input (example second image) Check that box and Click on Finish.

Convulsant

Answer 4

UPDATE:

Change hw.keyboard = yes.

And make the file config.ini Read-only:

1.Right-click on the file open its settings.

2.Make every options on the permissions tab into Read-only(refer screenshot)

Trust me this will work it happens because this file gets rewritten,when we lock it out the bug disappears.

Salmonella

@electrofant...No way you must have did unknowingly did something else along with it – Salmonella

Answer 5

Quick script to do it automatically. Make sure to rename the emulator name part:

sed -i '' "s/hw.keyboard = no/hw.keyboard = yes/" $ANDROID_HOME/avd/[EMULATOR_NAME]/config.ini

Ambrotype