Text Input

Overview

Keyboard extensions will by default only send text to the text field in the currently active app, and will not detect if you select a text field within the keyboard.

This makes it hard to build features that require the user to type within the keyboard extensions, like search features, or AI-based text inputs.

KeyboardKit therefore adds ways to make this easier, and adds ways to route text to any other text field within the keyboard extension.

KeyboardKit Pro unlocks even more input utilities, like a KeyboardTextField that automatically lets you type within a keyboard extension.

Core Features

UIInputController has a textDocumentProxy, which is how a keyboard is meant to integrate with the currently active app.

KeyboardKit’s KeyboardInputViewController adds an additional textInputProxy property, that can be set to replace textDocumentProxy as the main text document proxy.

Setting textInputProxy will cause any text you type in the keyboard to be sent to that proxy instead. Just set the textInputProxy to nil to start routing text back to the main app.

👑 Pro Features

KeyboardKit Pro unlocks text input views that automatically register and unregister themselves as the textInputProxy when they receive and lose focus.

KeyboardTextField wraps a UITextField and can be used for single-line text inputs (or multi-line in later versions of iOS), while KeyboardTextView wraps a multi-line UITextView.

Both views support SwiftUI FocusState and have a focused view modifier that lets you provide a custom done button that slides in when the view is focused.

Documentation

The information on this page is shortened to be easier to overview. For more information about this feature, code samples, etc. please see the online documentation.

⌨️