UsersGuide

User's Guide

Please see the FrequentlyAskedQuestions page for additional details, including hints, tips, and known issues.

Enabling the keyboard

Hacker's Keyboard provides a new Android input method. It is disabled by default, and for security reasons Android doesn't allow programs to change input method settings. It will display a help screen when you first install it, please follow the following steps to activate it:

1. Add the keyboard to the system's input method list:
   1. Open the system input settings configuration by pressing the Configure input methods button
   2. Find Hacker's Keyboard in the input method list, tap the checkmark to switch it on.
   3. Acknowledge the warning shown by the system. The system always shows this message when enabling a third-party input method, see FrequentlyAskedQuestions.
   4. Press the Back button to return to the previous screen
2. Choose the currently active input method:
   1. Press the Set current input method button.
   2. Select Hacker's Keyboard from the list.

Keyboard layout

The keyboard mostly works like the standard Gingerbread keyboard, including multitouch support. You can get a shifted character in two ways:

• tap shift and let go, tap the character.
• press and hold shift, tap the character, let go of shift.

This works the same way for the Ctrl and Alt modifiers. You can lock shift mode by tapping it twice, indicated by a glowing green dot on the left shift key. The other modifiers don't lock, they only affect the next key. You can cancel a modifier by pressing the modifier key again.

Long-pressing keys shows a popup mini-keyboard including shifted keys and (for some keys) additional special characters.

The "Fn" key shows an alternate keymap with additional special keys including Home, Page up/down, F1-F12, and a number block. Note that many Android applications aren't programmed to handle these keys, so they may be ignored.

The arrow keys in the bottom right corner generate directional pad (trackball) key events. The "✓" (checkmark) key next to the arrows corresponds to pressing the directional pad center button.

Configuration options

In addition to the standard Gingerbread configuration options, Hacker's Keyboard adds the following settings:

Keyboard height - two settings, separately for portrait and landscape mode, for the overall keyboard height as a percentage of screen size. Change these settings if you prefer larger or smaller keys.

Full keyboard in portrait mode - If this setting is off, use the original Gingerbread keyboard layout (4 rows, 10 across) in portrait mode. This is intended for phones since the keys get unreasonably small in full mode. It is off by default for phones, on for tablets.

Show suggestions in landscape mode - Turn this setting off if you want to hide the suggestions bar above the keyboard in landscape mode. The overall suggestions behavior is controlled by the Gingerbread settings below.

Always use standard view in landscape mode - By default, Android uses a special mini-editor when editing text fields in landscape mode that shows only one field at a time. You can change this setting to keep the standard view active in landscape mode instead. Doing so can cause compatibility issues with some applications that can't cope with the small screen height.

Key hint label visibility - Controls the additional key labels shown on keys to indicate shift/long-press additional characters.

Tab key and Ctrl-I send ConnectBot-compatible Tab - This is a hack to support the current Market versions of ConnectBot that don't handle the Tab key correctly. You shouldn't need to change this, but it's configurable in case future ConnectBot version behave differently.

Credits and Acknowledgements

Based on the LatinIME package from the Gingerbread AOSP distribution: http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=platform/packages/inputmethods/LatinIME.git

Includes the Cyanogen "en" dictionary as distributed under the Apache 2.0 licence here: https://gist.github.com/CyanogenMod/android_vendor_cyanogen/tree/gingerbread/overlay/common/packages/inputmethods/LatinIME/java/res

Arabic 4-row keyboard based on the AnySoftKeyboard language pack as distributed under the Apache 2.0 license here: http://code.google.com/p/softkeyboard/source/browse/trunk/LanguagePacks/Arabic/

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: Mr.Vo...@gmail.com

Would be fine to have an option to show/hide the top row of the keys to see more of the screen... ...this could be done by a long tap on 'Esc' ...the only problem in the compact mode would be the hidden backspace key (it could be moved on the place of the '#' key)

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: D4T3N...@googlemail.com

I'd love to have the Fn key in Portrait mode. Or do I miss something? Anyway, thanx for this great IME!!!

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: chuli...@gmail.com

What about accented characters? Is there a direct solution without longpressing? I would like to use it as in a PC, pulsing accent first and then the vowel

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: barto...@gmail.com

Hello,

I would like to thank you for the terrific keyboard. Typing gets so much faster with the shift key & the digits on the same page.

Many non-english speaking users would like to have the opportunity of using the alt key along with another key, in order to have a special character typical for their language, just like in PC. E.g. my language has seven such additional characters. Do you plan to enable this? Best regards, Bartosz

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: exec...@gmail.com

salut!

cool kbfor tablets, indeed!

however, what is a small "o"-key between "Fn" and "Cursor Left" keys?

(on official screenshots it's marked as "V")

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: brandes....@gmail.com

Comment by Mr.Vo...@gmail.com, Oct 6, 2011 Would be fine to have an option to show/hide the top row of the keys to see more of the screen... ...this could be done by a long tap on 'Esc' ...the only problem in the compact mode would be the hidden backspace key (it could be moved on the place of the '#' key)

I support this request or feature proposal! While it is the best keyboard around, using it on a Galaxy Note is somewhat troublesome due to several reasons: eventhough the device is big by smartphone standards, in landscape layout the area above the keyboard is rather small, while at the same time the keys themselves are quite small as well and due to the form factor of the device, the keys are all uuhm... you could say shifted to the left. It's quite hard to type like this because you always have to reach quite far over to the left to type "two-handed" to skip all the accented letters/paragraphs/parenthesis keys situated on the right. An alternative layout, kind of some sort of layout-mixture and hideable top-row while keeping most of the full-layout intact would solve all this quite nicely.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: skatebi...@gmail.com

Nice keyboard ! Only the numeric keypad is reversed: the 1-2-3 should be on top rather tha bottom. Making the keyboard layout user-customizable is very useful !

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: PSKN...@gmail.com

A great work Klaus!! By far the best soft keyboard I have ever used!!

The only feature I would like to request is the option to swap the functionality of the 'Shift-Lock' function to that of a 'Caps-Lock' function, locking the upper-case of letter-keys only, leaving the number keys in their default number-key mode as it is rare that one needs to type many of the special characters above the number-keys at a time intermixed with uppercase letters.

Thanks for your great work here and a great keyboard!

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: barneyb...@gmail.com

Droid Bionic: I was beginning to think it was illegal to have arrow keys. I have very large fingers and trying to position the cursor by pointing is very hard for me. (Interesting that I can get the keyboard to work well, even this one with smaller keys.) I love this thing, even after only 30 minutes.

To skatebi...@gmail.com: The number keypad is correct. Phones have 1-2-3 on top (which is so wrong!); calculators and keyboards have 1-2-3 on the bottom.

To PSKN...@gmail.com: I vote for Caps-Lock too, same reasons.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: LST...@gmail.com

This is the best freeware Android Keyboard for tablets after I tried so many others. Great work especially the Arrow Keys that help with my fat fingers to correct typing errors. To make it perfet, add new feature for Insertion of text from user created templates will be a big enhancement.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: pkel...@gmail.com

I would really like a text replacement capability like Apple has. I understand that this can only be done in keyboard apps. E.g. define xxx to be changed to my email address. Whenever I type xxx my email address is inserted instead. Please consider this.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: reaper...@gmail.com

do You plan to add "traditional" 3x4 keyboard as option in portrait mode? it was be great!

tnx for good work!

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: david.fh...@gmail.com

This is a fantastic keyboard! I only miss the button for activate/deactivate handwriting with the stylus for galaxy note. Is that possible to fix? /David

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: patr...@teamkelso.org

I second the text expansion request

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: 0ro...@gmail.com

Love the keyboard, but as im sure some have asked..where are the sound options? I need that clicking sound, arrows are the best i have seen yet.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: s.vansly...@gmail.com

Be nice to have predictive text working, and the word "I" capitalized.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: marcomes...@gmail.com

Klaus, this is the best keyboard on the market by far. Great job. Thanks. Is there a way for a user to add to the predictive entries file to create custom macro substitutions? Thanks

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: wischnew...@gmail.com

An amazing keyboard, awesome work! Became an instant number 1 on my galaxy tab. The only thing I'd like to have is the behaviour of a regular keyboard in terms of the "alt"-key - would prefer it to press alt+2 to access the @-symbol instead of long-pressing as currently enabled. As a workaround, I'd also appreciate the ability to replace one of my unused keys with @, if there is a chance to.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: hafe...@googlemail.com

a very very good keyboard app. on my galaxy tab 10.1n with android 4.0.4 the autocorrection and dictonary don't works.

is this only a problem on this tab?

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: joshlaut...@gmail.com

Spell check doesnt work even though i downloaded english dictionary.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: joshlaut...@gmail.com

Added to last comment - i have galaxy tab 10.1 just updated to ice cream sandwhich.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: tscro...@gmail.com

Is there a way to change the actual letter size on each button? The font size seems rather small imo.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: johnpcy...@gmail.com

Excellent keyboard, I play with other new ones as they come out and some are not bad, e.g. some of the slider type K/Bs, but I always come back to this one as it just works and without lag on either my Xoom or my SII. The only thing I would really, really, really like added is shortcuts :). I have a messy way round it using the custom dic and the suggestion bar, but it is very clumsy and doesn't save much when needing long terms that start with a fairly common group of characters. If all android apps worked with your Ctrl/Alt keys it would be no problem as I could then get round it with Opera 12 extensions like HotkeysBB, but until then, shortcuts would be great and I would happily pay for that feature.

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: rengari...@gmail.com

Very nice keyboard and loving it, I wish there was a way to get the numeric keypad to come up by default and stick since i do a lot of spreadsheet input

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by: estw...@gmail.com

Not able to spell check?