I’m quite struggling on integrating a virtual keyboard on my python app.
These are the virtual keyboard I tried and my problems on each one.

I’m on Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm on a Raspberry Pi 5.

matchbox-keyboard

On this keyboard I got an extremely strange bug that happened when my app is in Fullscreen mode (Need to clic 1 time with a mouse on the virtual keyboard).

This bug also occur when a popup is showed, the user cannot click ok with the touch screen but can close the popup.

This is a simple script where I replicated the bug:

import tkinter as tk
import subprocess
import psutil

def open_virtual_keyboard(event):
    global keyboard_process
    if keyboard_process is None or keyboard_process.poll() is not None:
        keyboard_process = subprocess.Popen(['matchbox-keyboard'])

        root.after(100, lambda: event.widget.focus_force())
        print("Opening a virtual keyboard")


def close_virtual_keyboard(event=None):
    global keyboard_process
    root.after(100, check_focus)
    print("Closing the virtual keyboard")

def check_focus():
    global keyboard_process
    focused_widget = root.focus_get()
    if not isinstance(focused_widget, tk.Entry):
        if keyboard_process is not None:
            keyboard_process.terminate()
            keyboard_process = None

def on_closing():
    close_virtual_keyboard()
    for proc in psutil.process_iter(['name']):
        if proc.info['name'] == 'matchbox-keyboard':
            proc.terminate()
    root.destroy()

def handle_click(event):
    if not isinstance(event.widget, tk.Entry):
        close_virtual_keyboard()

keyboard_process = None

root = tk.Tk()
root.title("Virtual keyboard App")
screen_width = root.winfo_screenwidth()
screen_height = root.winfo_screenheight()

# BUG
root.attributes("-fullscreen", True)
root.geometry(f"{screen_width}x{screen_height}")
root.update()
# BUG



entry1 = tk.Entry(root)
entry1.pack(padx=10, pady=10)

entry2 = tk.Entry(root)
entry2.pack(padx=10, pady=10)

for entry in (entry1, entry2):
    entry.bind("<FocusIn>", open_virtual_keyboard)
    entry.bind("<FocusOut>", close_virtual_keyboard)

root.bind("<Button-1>", handle_click)

root.protocol("WM_DELETE_WINDOW", on_closing)

root.mainloop()

wvkbd-mobintl

When my app is in Fullscreen mode I don’t manage to bring the virtual keyboard to the front. Even thought I tried a lot of things with xdotool and other tools.

onboard

I don’t manage to show the keyboard and hide it, I tried with dbus-send.