Onsceen keyboard in desktop mode

[Alroy Swain]

Hi,

A new surface pro 3 owners here. Apologies if this has been answered before, I have tried searching the forum. Anyway, I don't have a type cover keyboard yet, waiting for the blue one to get back in stock. The on screen keyboard does not come on automatically in input fields in desktop mode. Is there a setting to enable it? It works fine in metro apps.

 

[MBSMD]

Hi,

A new surface pro 3 owners here. Apologies if this has been answered before, I have tried searching the forum. Anyway, I don't have a type cover keyboard yet, waiting for the blue one to get back in stock. The on screen keyboard does not come on automatically in input fields in desktop mode. Is there a setting to enable it? It works fine in metro apps.

As far as I can tell, this Is limitation of desktop-mode apps.

 

[DoctorSaline]

Hi,

A new surface pro 3 owners here. Apologies if this has been answered before, I have tried searching the forum. Anyway, I don't have a type cover keyboard yet, waiting for the blue one to get back in stock. The on screen keyboard does not come on automatically in input fields in desktop mode. Is there a setting to enable it? It works fine in metro apps.

You can use the traditional On Screen Keyboard for desktop. It used to be under start>all programs>accesibility programs> on screen keyboard

But since windows 8.1 doesn't have a start menu(I think), you can try running it through task manager.
New task> osk

Edit: I just realized you wouldn't be able to type osk in new task since there is no keyboard to begin with. What is this Microsoft?

 

[malberti1993]

When in desktop mode, theres a keyboard icon on the botton right of the screen where you just tap and the keyboard comes up. Desktop mode is made for the touch keyboard so they disabled the keyboard from automatically coming up because it would be annoying for it to come up when the type cover is attached.

 

[RajeevT]

When in desktop mode, theres a keyboard icon on the botton right of the screen where you just tap and the keyboard comes up. Desktop mode is made for the touch keyboard so they disabled the keyboard from automatically coming up because it would be annoying for it to come up when the type cover is attached.

So how much effort would it have taken for them to make the OSK pop up if a text entry field is clicked and no external keyboard or touch/type/power cover is detected? Lazy and really bad implementation from Microsoft, and one I've been hoping they would fix ever since the Windows 8 RCs and Previews were released, because it's just such an obvious irritant. I'm also hoping they'll one day bring the WP-style Swype keyboard to Windows, but I'm not holding my breath for that either.

 

[DoctorSaline]

I'm also hoping they'll one day bring the WP-style Swype keyboard to Windows, but I'm not holding my breath for that either.

A sane person would expect feature parity with all of MS OSes come threshold. But knowing MS, they will be like, "We ran out of time to rewrite universal core OS apps that are mutual on all platforms."
And then spend another year or two rewriting all those apps with lots of screw ups.

 

[Dmitry13]

I made a small tool to fix this issue.
Try it:
greatis (dot) com/auto-popup-keyboard-desktop-windows/

 

[JasCola]

pretty cool- I will check out your tool. Thank you

 

[michalw2]

Unfortunately it doesn't work in Opera browser.
Could You please fix it Dmitry13?
Thanks in advance.