Header

A Flutter plugin to detect keyboard visibility across platforms using modern APIs. Supports floating keyboard and Android predictive back gesture.

Floating keyboard and predictive back gesture detection is only supported on Android 11+.

On iOS, this plugin falls back to an implementation based on flutter_keyboard_visibility until I have time to write my own implementation.

WASM support was originally planned, but since VirtualKeyboard API is still experimental and not widely supported, I have decided to postpone it until the API is stable and supported by major browsers.

Desktop platforms like macOS, Windows and Linux are not planned. Still, you are welcome to make contributions in this regard.

Basic open-close Predictive back Floating keyboard
Basic open-close Predictive back Floating keyboard

Table of Contents

Installation

Add the dependency to your pubspec.yaml:

dependencies:
  unite_keyboard_visibility: ^0.4.1

Then get packages:

dart pub get

Usage

Import and initialize the plugin before accessing visibility:

import 'package:unite_keyboard_visibility/unite_keyboard_visibility.dart';

void main() async {
  WidgetsFlutterBinding.ensureInitialized();
  await UniteKeyboardVisibility.instance.initialize();

  runApp(const MyApp());
}

On Android, this plugin defines 4 states of keyboard visibility: maybeOpen, maybeClose, open and close, which correspond to:

  • maybeOpen: The keyboard is moving from close to open or return back to close.
  • maybeClose: The keyboard is moving from open to close or return back to open.
  • close: The keyboard is definitely closed.
  • open: The keyboard is definitely opened.

The reason maybeOpen and maybeClose exist is because Android 15 enables predictive back animation by default, which allows the user to "cancel/reverse" ongoing keyboard animation. This confuses nearly all visibility detection methods introduced before Predictive Back in Android 13, which assumed that the animations/user gestures would not affect the final outcome and thus gave incorrect or outdated results. While some plugins have been updated to support this new behavior, more often than not, they try to hide the complexity of keyboard visibility by using a single isOpen boolean, which is not sufficient to accurately represent the current keyboard state and leads to awkwardness in their API usage.

Furthermore, older implementations (before Android 11) rely on outdated APIs that use "bottom inset" to deduce keyboard visibility. This is a flawed approach and was more of a workaround for the problem at the time. Even though it works for basic bottom-aligned keyboards, it falls flat on its face when floating keyboards are involved because now "bottom inset" is always equal to 0, which corresponds to "close" regardless of whether the keyboard is actually closed or not.

This plugin uses modern APIs which hook directly into the underlying native platform keyboard states and animations (see here), allowing you to access exactly at any given time what the current keyboard visibility is, and whether it is ephemeral (maybeOpen, maybeClose) or stable (open, close). It does not try to hide the complexity of keyboard visibility and trusts you to make conscious decisions about how to handle it in your own app.

On iOS, because the user can't "cancel" the keyboard animation like on Android, maybeOpen and maybeClose are not needed. Therefore, only open and close states are emitted on iOS.

To access the current visibility:

final visibility = UniteKeyboardVisibility.instance;
final status = visibility.value;

print('Keyboard is $status');

Listen to visibility changes, the current value will be emitted immediately for any new listener:

visibility.valueStream.listen((status) {
  print('Keyboard visibility changed: $status');
});

Plugin lifecycle

initialize

Future<void> initialize({
  bool enableLogging = false,
  bool forceFallback = false,
});

Initializes keyboard visibility detection.

  • enableLogging: Enables internal logging. Defaults to false.
  • forceFallback: Forces the fallback implementation (flutter_keyboard_visibility) on Android. Has no effect on iOS. Defaults to false.

Dispose

Future<void> dispose();

Closes stream and releases all plugin resources.

Utility widgets

For developers who want a one and done solution, this plugin provides a couple of useful widgets to help you handle some common use cases.

KeyboardVisibilityUnfocuser

Auto unfocus any primary focused widget (for example TextField) when keyboard closes.

Simply wrap your app's root widget with KeyboardVisibilityUnfocuser:

KeyboardVisibilityUnfocuser(
  child: const MyApp(),
)

You can also customize the unfocus behavior by providing a defaultUnfocusMode, or disable unfocusing entirely with enableUnfocusing:

KeyboardVisibilityUnfocuser(
  // Set to false to disable automatic unfocusing
  enableUnfocusing: true,
  // Choose when to unfocus:
  // eager (as soon as keyboard starts closing) or lazy (after it fully closes)
  defaultUnfocusMode: KeyboardVisibilityUnfocusMode.eager,
  child: const MyApp(),
)

To customize unfocusing for individual focusable, use KeyboardVisibilityFocusNode:

class MyWidget extends StatefulWidget {
  @override
  State<MyWidget> createState() => _MyWidgetState();
}

class _MyWidgetState extends State<MyWidget> {
  // Initialize the KeyboardVisibilityFocusNode.
  final focusNode = KeyboardVisibilityFocusNode(
    unfocusMode: KeyboardVisibilityUnfocusMode.eager,
  );

  @override
  void dispose() {
    // Dispose the focusNode when the widget is disposed.
    focusNode.dispose();
    super.dispose();
  }

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return TextField(
      focusNode: focusNode,
    );
  }
}

KeyboardVisibilityBuilder

Build a widget that depends on keyboard visibility.

KeyboardVisibilityBuilder(
  builder: (context, status, child) {
    return Text(
      status == KeyboardVisibilityStatus.open
          ? 'Keyboard is visible.'
          : 'Keyboard is hidden.',
    );
  },
);

Troubleshooting

  • Ensure you call initialize() before using value or valueStream, or a PluginUninitializedError will be thrown when you try to access any of the plugin resources.
  • Use forceFallback on Android if the native implementation does not detect visibility correctly. This option will be removed once the plugin is fully stable (ideally with full Android, iOS and WASM support).

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please open issues and PRs on GitHub.

License

MIT

Libraries

unite_keyboard_visibility