Auto suggestions disappeared after upgrading to Android 13

[blochl]

WARNING: This is a rather ancient project that was originally developed back in 2011 based on the Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) AOSP keyboard. While it still works as-is for many users, it would need some major rewrites to work with newer APIs, and some features such as language switching or popup keys don't work right on modern Android systems. I'm not currently planning on significant updates, and it's possible that it will stop working on modern devices or will no longer be updateable via the Google Play store due to minimum API level requirements. Play Store requires targeting API level 29 (Android 10), while the code was written for API level 9 (Android 2.3) from 2011.

I am aware it's an old project, but I absolutely love it, and didn't find a suitable alternative for years now.

Describe the bug
After upgrading to Android 13, the word suggestions disappeared. I do have the dictionaries installed.

To Reproduce
Start typing a message - no orange suggestions appear above the keyboard.

Expected behavior
Once typing a message, word suggestions appear above the keyboard. Even before typing - suggestions for punctuation marks appear.

Screenshots

Smartphone (please complete the following information):

• Device: Pixel 4a 5G
• OS: Android 13
• App version 1.40.7

[mansr]

I've noticed the same thing on Pixel 5. The predictions seem to be generated since space/punctuation completes the word as expected.

[AeSix]

S22 Ultra, same issue.
So, not just the pixel

[MrSent]

Same on the Galaxy Note20

[acidstout]

This happens on all devices running Android 13 afaik. It would be a shame if this kinda kills Hacker's Keyboard, because it's the world's best keyboard ever. Seriously, if anyone's able to fix it, please do so. I would try to fix it if I could. Unfortunately my knowledge of developing Android apps is pretty much non-existing. :(

[Foo-Manroot]

It looks like there was a change in Android 13 that affected all soft keyboards, not only this one.

According to https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/246132117 , this issue is assigned; so there should be an Android update at some point that will fix it (hopefully soon). I tried the workaround that they mention, setCandidatesViewShown(true);, but the issue persists. Maybe I did it wrong, idk, I'm not familiar with soft keyboard development, nor with this codebase...

There's also a recent StackOverflow question which might be related, it can be worth keeping an eye on it: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/75353455/from-android-12-onward-candidateview-or-suggestion-list-not-showing-up-in-custom

[ecm-pushbx]

I believe I fixed this. It isn't pretty but it seems to work fine for now. Patch is at c504b79

I also fixed an incompatibility between new ConnectBot versions and Hacker's Keyboard, refer to connectbot/connectbot#1038 -- patch is at d5a4ef1

[ecm-pushbx]

Added another fix to avoid the "double tap on Back needed for some applications" problem of my prior patch, this was mentioned in https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/246132117#comment18

ecm-pushbx@859b0d4

[ecm-pushbx]

If someone wants to try without having to build from the sources, I uploaded debug APKs that work on my device, a Nothing Phone (1), to https://pushbx.org/ecm/test/20230325/

[Foo-Manroot]

Hi

Thank you very much for taking the time!
I'm not quite sure what I did wrong, because setCandidatesViewShown() does indeed work correctly... Maybe I just added it to the wrong subclass, idk

In any case, I confirm this fixes the issue on LineageOS 20.0. Now I can see the suggestions again

[ecm-pushbx]

It's important to call super.setCandidatesViewShown. In my testing it appears you only need to call the super. prefixed function actually, and not the ones provided by our class. I'm just learning all of this so it is trial and error.

Also, there still are bugs around this, for example whenever I send a message in the blabber.im app the keyboard disappears and immediately re-appears.

[ecm-pushbx]

Updated with another bugfix to address the last problem I mentioned, ecm-pushbx@b12891b

[ecm-pushbx]

I wrote about my bugfixes on my blog: https://pushbx.org/ecm/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=blog:pushbx:2023:0326_more_ldebug_getinput_work_hacker_s_keyboard_app_modding (This also contains a description of what I had to do to make the app build.)

[blochl]

Any chance that it will be updated on Google Play?

[ecm-pushbx]

Any chance that it will be updated on Google Play?

Hi, just wanted to quickly reply. I think that the targeted Android platform version is too old for the Play store. I don't know how much work it would be to update that. I also don't know generally what is entailed in getting an app published there. This is the very first time I did any work on an Android app.

[TPS]

@ecm-pushbx Still, if you were to open a PR here for @klausw to review & approve, it would make it to F-droid, where HK's a mainstay.

[Kl3nch]

Just a note to flag up that I'm having the same issue on a Nokia X30 running Android 13, stock not rooted.

[SelenaSaberWind]

I wrote about my bugfixes on my blog: https://pushbx.org/ecm/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=blog:pushbx:2023:0326_more_ldebug_getinput_work_hacker_s_keyboard_app_modding (This also contains a description of what I had to do to make the app build.)

If you have a moment, would you be so kind as to tell me how to implement your fix please? I'm not a programmer/developer, so this is new territory for me. TYSM!

[TPS]

If someone wants to try without having to build from the sources, I uploaded debug APKs that work on my device, a Nothing Phone (1), to https://pushbx.org/ecm/test/20230325/

@SelenaSaberWind Did you try the build uploaded here?

[nabijaczleweli]

I can reproduce this (at least I think this is the same thing):
on Lineage 16 (Android 9), I see the punctuation bar populated:

and on Lineage 21 (Android 14), it's still there, but empty:

Installing @ecm-pushbx's fork (building android programs is insurmountable for me, so from https://pushbx.org/ecm/test/20230325/20230326.1.apk (thanks for linking the page in the blog post, sorry for scraping it for the newest version)) fixed it :)

[nabijaczleweli]

Or not; it actually works everywhere except for ConnectBot where clicking on the text to pop up the esc/ctrl/left/&c. controls hides the keyboard and it's sometimes difficult to pull up again.

[nabijaczleweli]

With minor issues (https://101010.pl/@nabijaczleweli/112320802836461846) I found the bug in @ecm-pushbx's fix (nabijaczleweli@d9a4041), yielding 1041006.apk in https://lfs.nabijaczleweli.xyz/0019-org.pocketworkstation.pckeyboard (cf. bisect in INDEX and branches/tags on https://github.com/nabijaczleweli/hackerskeyboard).

[TPS]

@nabijaczleweli: https://github.com/SeventhM/hackerskeyboard seems to be the most active current fork. Maybe PR there so @SeventhM might review?

[SeventhM]

Note: after some testing around, ecm-pushbx's fix only kinda works on my fork. I managed to break viewing candidates. Probably something to do with how I updated to AndroidX though I need to do a bit more follow ups. I also realized that particularly fix causes issues in some apps (notably chromium based browsers) where the keyboard gets shown, but hidden, requiring a use of the back button to dismiss it despite the keyboard not being entirely on the screen. I think I know what the relevant issue is here, but again, I need to do some follow up checks to understand what I broke about the candidates

[SeventhM]

For anyone wanting to follow along with figuring out what I might've broke by accident: SeventhM#4

This would be a lot easier if I had a dictionary that worked. I know HK is supposed to work with AnySoft dictionaries, but they no longer release those as a separate app. I think(?) almost the whole app can be found here, so that might be an avenue to check. But I suspect that'll be a dead end. Plus it would likely be a better idea to implement the dictionary within the app as a default (while simply allowing external dictionaries as well) so we don't have this issue in the future

[nabijaczleweli]

Somehow I don't think this is at all related to dictionaries, given that I'm (was) affected by this and don't use a dictionary.

[AeSix]

I'm pretty sure even though you don't use dictionaries for spell checking, that a dict is used for the suggested words. Since that's an integral part of the top bar, if that's not working properly - that bar may misbehave.

[nabijaczleweli]

It can't really be an integral part of the top bar if i haven't seen a word suggestion in the last five years and the bar works perfectly and as-expected. Probably.

[SeventhM]

Turns out dictionaries wasn't entirely relevant, but getting them working is still helpful for me