iOS Safari: Prevent (or Control) Scroll on Input Focus

Question

There are a lot of old questions sort of (but not quite) about this, but as I couldn't find anything modern, I thought I'd ask again with the hope of receiving a modern answer.

I am working on a hobbyist responsive web app, but I'm having trouble with input focus on iOS. I would like the input to scroll to just above the iOS keyboard on focus (or not scroll), but iOS wants to center that control no matter what.

In the attached GIF, you can see the behavior I'm seeing, and then I scroll at the end to indicate what I'd like to happen as soon as the focus event is triggered.

One thing I found that sort of works, but I'd like something better: the following code works, but has a noticeable delay between the scroll you see in the GIF and the window returning to the position I'd like it. Also, if I adjust the setTimeout() timing below ~400, it doesn't work. Does iOS have some block during its focus scroll bump?

element.addEventListener('focus', (e) => { setTimeout(() => { window.scroll(0,0) }, 500) });

 

Update #1

So far, the only solution I've tried that's worked is the following, which feels pretty janky (where scrollLock is defined elsewhere in focus and blur listeners):

document.addEventListener('scroll', (e) => {
    if (scrollLock && document.documentElement.scrollTop > 100) {
        document.documentElement.scrollTop = 100;
    }
});

All the solutions involving preventDefault() or window.scroll calls have not prevented the scroll pictured above, but actively monitoring the scroll and forcing it back to where I want it does work. Would love for this not to be the answer, however!

Chastitychasuble

Do you have that much height to the container? Could you make window.scroll(0,0) work on click of a button or something rather than focus? – Irksome

The container height doesn't seem to matter to mobile Safari (and it's a flex container, but it shouldn't take more than available view height). And I could trigger on other than focus, but that won't solve that initial scroll iOS does. – Chastitychasuble

How about trying this solution? https://mcmap.net/q/341854/-how-to-prevent-ios-keyboard-from-pushing-the-view-off-screen-with-css-or-js Let me know how it goes. – Irksome

One of the solutions I came across is - Keep a hidden element somewhere around footer. Watch for focus event on input and make that hidden element visible. Maybe this would do the trick. – Irksome

Thanks for the research @Rayon! Unfortunately those solutions didn't work, but I did find one possibility that I've added as an update to the OP. – Chastitychasuble

That clip is so useful! I am trying to do something similar but I want my input(searchbar) to move all the way up so that the results are not hidden by the keyboard. Its working fine in non ios mobile devices. Can you tell me what is scrollLock doing? – Hearken

Answer 1

One thing that worked for us is to call a scroll event 50ms after getting focus. So if you click into the text field a focus event is triggered. In that event we trigger a setTimeout(() => window.scrollTo(0,100), 50).

Semiliterate

Answer 2

Similar issue with iOS 15, in my specific case the body was scrolling horizontally when an input element towards the right side of the page became focused. Adding position: fixed to the body and html elements fixed this for me, but I don't have any scrolling (Single Page App) so this may cause more problems for others.

Acarology

Answer 3

I had a similar issue and came across this post while googling (for hours). I came back to post what worked for me in case it helps others.

Specifically I was using a bootstrap-vue modal with a text input and on focus/tap of the input field Android chrome would scroll to the bottom of the modal (looks similar to your video), if i scrolled back up and typed it stayed in focus but tapping again it would scroll again back to same spot.

Here's what worked:

html,body{
    -webkit-overflow-scrolling : touch !important;
    overflow: auto !important;
}

Original Credit to: https://mcmap.net/q/216956/-safari-in-ios8-is-scrolling-screen-when-fixed-elements-get-focus

Astrict