Android crashes on keyboard plugging

Question

I'm developing an Android application in which I need support a USB keyboard. I haven't developed something to explicitly support the USB keyboard because I thought that every application can use a USB keyboard.

The problem is that when I'm trying to connect or disconnect a USB keyboard, my application crashes without an error trace from the application.

My device is a Lenovo with Android 4.1 installed. What can I do to resolve this problem?

Answer 1

An Activity configuration change occurs when the external keyboard is attached.

To resolve the crash, add the following element to the AndroidManifest.xml for all activities:

android:configChanges="orientation|keyboard|keyboardHidden"

Per the documentation, android:configChanges:

Lists configuration changes that the activity will handle itself. When a configuration change occurs at runtime, the activity is shut down and restarted by default, but declaring a configuration with this attribute will prevent the activity from being restarted. Instead, the activity remains running and its onConfigurationChanged() method is called.