Force on screen keyboard to show when bluetooth keyboard connected

Question

I have to have a bluetooth scanner connected to an app I am developing. The scanner acts as a keyboard input but there are no keys, only a button to scan with. The problem I am running into is there are a few UITextFields that a user needs to interact with on the screen.

When the user taps the textfield to enter in data, no keyboard pops up because the iOS thinks there is a full keyboard attached via bluetooth.

How can I force the screen keyboard to show up when the UITextField "becomes first responder" ?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

The problem is that the Bluetooth scanner is pretending to be a Bluetooth keyboard, so iOS thinks that it doesn't need to show the onscreen one.

Unfortunately there's no easy answer for this. Some scanners have a button you can press that will force the onscreen keyboard to come up. Some allow you to pair in "iPhone mode" (or something similar) so that it doesn't act as a Bluetooth keyboard.

This answer to a related question (https://stackoverflow.com/a/3837131/493988) has what seems like a hack based on a UITextField's inputAccessoryView, but I haven't personally verified it so I can't say much about it. Good luck!