Sometimes when developing your game you might need to have access to the keyboard Input that your target platform provides, this is done straight forward in unity just by calling some attributes via scripting.
Using the Keyboard
GUI Elements
The keyboard will appear automatically when a user taps on editable GUI elements. Currently, GUI.TextField, GUI.TextArea and GUI.PasswordField are capable of automatic handling of keyboard. Please read GUI documentation to find out how to use these.
Manual Keyboard Handling
Use the iPhoneKeyboard.Open function to open the keyboard. Please see the iPhoneKeyboard scripting reference for the parameters that this function takes.
Keyboard Type Summary
The Keyboard supports the following types:
| iPhoneKeyboardType.Default | Letters. Can be switched to keyboard with numbers and punctuation. |
| iPhoneKeyboardType.ASCIICapable | Letters. Can be switched to keyboard with numbers and punctuation. |
| iPhoneKeyboardType.NumbersAndPunctuation | Numbers and punctuation. Can be switched to keyboard with letters. |
| iPhoneKeyboardType.URL | Letters with slash and .com buttons. Can be switched to keyboard with numbers and punctuation. |
| iPhoneKeyboardType.NumberPad | Only numbers from 0 to 9. |
| iPhoneKeyboardType.PhonePad | Keyboard used to enter phone numbers. |
| iPhoneKeyboardType.NamePhonePad | Letters. Can be switched to phone keyboard. |
| iPhoneKeyboardType.EmailAddress | Letters with @ sign. Can be switched to keyboard with numbers and punctuation. |
Text Preview
By default, an edit box will be created and placed on top of the keyboard after it appears. This works as preview of the text that user is typing, so the text is always visible for the user. However, you can disable text preview by setting iPhoneKeyboard.hideInput to true. Note that this works only for certain keyboard types and input modes. For example, it will not work for phone keypads and multi-line text input. In such cases, the edit box will always appear.iPhoneKeyboard.hideInput is a global variable and will affect all keyboards.
Keyboard Orientation
By default, the keyboard automatically follows the device orientation. To disable or enable rotation to a certain orientation, use the following properties available in iPhoneKeyboard:
| autorotateToPortrait | Enable or disable autorotation to portrait orientation (button at the bottom). |
| autorotateToPortraitUpsideDown | Enable or disable autorotation to portrait orientation (button at top). |
| autorotateToLandscapeLeft | Enable or disable autorotation to landscape left orientation (button on the right). |
| autorotateToLandscapeRight | Enable or disable autorotation to landscape right orientation (button on the left). |
Visibility and Keyboard Size
There are three keyboard properties in iPhoneKeyboard that determine keyboard visibility status and size on the screen.
| visible | Returns true if the keyboard is fully visible on the screen and can be used to enter characters. |
| area | Returns the position and dimensions of the keyboard. |
| active | Returns true if the keyboard is activated. This property is not static property. You must have a keyboard instance to use this property. |
Note that iPhoneKeyboard.area will return a rect with position and size set to 0 until the keyboard is fully visible on the screen. You should not query this value immediately after iPhoneKeyboard.Open. The sequence of keyboard events is as follows:
- iPhoneKeyboard.Open is called. iPhoneKeyboard.active returns true. iPhoneKeyboard.visible returns false. iPhoneKeyboard.area returns (0, 0, 0, 0).
- Keyboard slides out into the screen. All properties remain the same.
- Keyboard stops sliding. iPhoneKeyboard.active returns true. iPhoneKeyboard.visible returns true. iPhoneKeyboard.area returns real position and size of the keyboard.
Secure Text Input
It is possible to configure the keyboard to hide symbols when typing. This is useful when users are required to enter sensitive information (such as passwords). To manually open keyboard with secure text input enabled, use the following code:
iPhoneKeyboard.Open("", iPhoneKeyboardType.Default, false, false, true);
Hiding text while typing
Alert keyboard
To display the keyboard with a black semi-transparent background instead of the classic opaque, call iPhoneKeyboard.Open as follows:
iPhoneKeyboard.Open("", iPhoneKeyboardType.Default, false, false, true, true);
Classic keyboard
Alert keyboard
