[Android] Physical keyboard does not work properly

[savs90]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues
• I have read the guide to filing a bug

Steps to reproduce

Hello Flutter team,

With the last update of Flutter we made for our app we encountered a problem that reflects a big portion of our customers. In Android only (tested in Web and iOS and there everything is fine) physical keyboard or barcode scanner are not usable anymore (no matter if USB or Bluetooth)

Reproducing steps:

1. Connect some physical keyboard to the Android device
2. Run the code sample on the Android device (We used Galaxy A52 and Tab A7)
3. Focus on the text field
4. Hit some character on the keyboard

Expected results

1. We expect that the keyboard should behave like in all other applications. This means that even if the virtual keyboard shows on when we first touch an input field, it will be closed and stay closed when we hit some character on the Physical keyboard.
2. We also expect that after entering a character the input field will not get out of focus

Actual results

In the result of step 4 the text field is getting out of focus the virtual keyboard hides and after that shows up but there is no focus of the field and you have to manually focus the text field again. Using a barcode reader results in entering a maximum the first character of the whole barcode

Code sample

Code sample

import 'package:flutter/material.dart';

void main() {
  runApp(const MyApp());
}

class MyApp extends StatelessWidget {
  const MyApp({super.key});

  // This widget is the root of your application.
  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return MaterialApp(
      title: 'Flutter HID Bug',
      theme: ThemeData(
        colorScheme: ColorScheme.fromSeed(seedColor: Colors.deepPurple),
        useMaterial3: true,
      ),
      home: FlutterHIDBug(),
    );
  }
}

class FlutterHIDBug extends StatelessWidget {
  final TextEditingController _txtCntrl = TextEditingController();

  FlutterHIDBug({super.key});

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return Scaffold(
      appBar: AppBar(
        backgroundColor: Theme.of(context).colorScheme.inversePrimary,
        title: const Text("Flutter HID Bug"),
      ),
      body: Center(
        child: TextField(
          controller: _txtCntrl,
          decoration: const InputDecoration(
            border: OutlineInputBorder(),
            hintText: 'Mark and try Physical keyboard entry',
          ),
        ),
      ),
    );
  }
}

Screenshots or Video

Screenshots / Video demonstration

[Upload media here]

Logs

Logs

[Paste your logs here]

Flutter Doctor output

Doctor output

[✓] Flutter (Channel stable, 3.13.8, on macOS 13.5 22G74 darwin-arm64, locale en-DE)
    • Flutter version 3.13.8 on channel stable at /Users/siyan/Development/flutter
    • Upstream repository https://github.com/flutter/flutter.git
    • Framework revision 6c4930c4ac (9 days ago), 2023-10-18 10:57:55 -0500
    • Engine revision 767d8c75e8
    • Dart version 3.1.4
    • DevTools version 2.25.0

[✓] Android toolchain - develop for Android devices (Android SDK version 32.1.0-rc1)
    • Android SDK at /Users/siyan/Library/Android/sdk
    • Platform android-33, build-tools 32.1.0-rc1
    • Java binary at: /Applications/Android Studio.app/Contents/jre/Contents/Home/bin/java
    • Java version OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 11.0.10+0-b96-7249189)
    • All Android licenses accepted.

[✓] Xcode - develop for iOS and macOS (Xcode 15.0)
    • Xcode at /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer
    • Build 15A240d
    • CocoaPods version 1.11.2

[✓] Chrome - develop for the web
    • Chrome at /Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome

[✓] Android Studio (version 2020.3)
    • Android Studio at /Applications/Android Studio.app/Contents
    • Flutter plugin can be installed from:
      🔨 https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/9212-flutter
    • Dart plugin can be installed from:
      🔨 https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/6351-dart
    • Java version OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 11.0.10+0-b96-7249189)

[✓] VS Code (version 1.83.1)
    • VS Code at /Applications/Visual Studio Code.app/Contents
    • Flutter extension version 3.74.0

[✓] Connected device (4 available)

[✓] Network resources
    • All expected network resources are available.

• No issues found!

[dam-ease]

Hi @savs90. Thanks for filing this. I see there is an already open issue describing this case #51478 . Can you check this out to confirm it is similar

[savs90]

Hey @dam-ease ! Thank you for your fast response but unfortunately this is not the same issue.
We did not have this problem until a month ago when we updated our Flutter SDK.
We also build the same code base with version 3.10.6 and there it works (The keyboard disappears and popups on each key press but this is not such an issue)
So judging also by the date of ticket #51478 it can't be related.

[savs90]

It looks like the same issue as #133736 but this is not the same as #51478 . I don't know why you marked those two as duplicates?

[dam-ease]

Thanks for your response @savs90.
Checked this on Realme 6 (both Flutter and native app), the keyboard always appears when typing (first time and later) and does not lose focus on TextField.

It looks like the same issue as #133736 but this is not the same as #51478 . I don't know why you marked those two as duplicates?

This was marked as duplicate by a team member because they had the same behavior, my thoughts are that a fix to #51478 should fix #133736 as well.
Also, all these issues have been tracked here: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/300236999?pli=1
Can you check this out?

[savs90]

@dam-ease Thanks for the info. As far as we tested, this is a problem with the Samsung keyboard and if GBoard is installed it is fixed and works as expected.
We just want to say again that until Flutter 3.10.6 this was working, and starting 3.13.* this appears like a problem.
For now, we can only monitor the progress of the tickets and hope that a fix will come soon.

[dam-ease]

Thanks for your response. Kindly comment your other findings and upvote these issues as well for more attention.
I’ll be closing this in favour of the already existing issues, if you disagree, please comment and I’ll reopen this
Thank you

[github-actions]

This thread has been automatically locked since there has not been any recent activity after it was closed. If you are still experiencing a similar issue, please open a new bug, including the output of flutter doctor -v and a minimal reproduction of the issue.