SolarOS 4.17.7 manual · job

screen-keyboard

The screen keyboard supplies touch and keyboard input above the shell, TUIs, and graphical applications on a selected display. Start the background job to arm its activation actions:

job start screen-keyboard mode=full
job start screen-keyboard mode=symbols display=display0
job start screen-keyboard mode=deck
job status screen-keyboard
screen-keyboard show
screen-keyboard hide
screen-keyboard toggle
screen-keyboard mode full
screen-keyboard mode symbols
screen-keyboard mode deck
job stop screen-keyboard

Start the job once, choosing one mode. By default, Ctrl+Space or an inward upward swipe from the bottom edge toggles visibility. Tap a key to enter it, or use the physical arrows to move the selection and Enter to activate it. Escape hides the keyboard. A downward swipe that starts inside its panel also hides it. Touch strokes reserved for activation or keyboard selection do not reach the application underneath; touches outside these regions remain normal application input.

Full mode provides letters, numbers, one-shot Shift/Ctrl/Alt, Caps Lock, a symbol table, and a navigation page with Tab, Escape, arrows, Home/End, Page Up/Down, Delete, and Backspace. Physical Tab cycles the full-mode pages. Symbols mode opens the punctuation palette directly, with = selected first. Deck mode provides two rows containing only punctuation absent from T-Deck's normal and Sym layers: = < > [ ] { } % & plus backslash, vertical bar, caret, tilde, and backtick. It has no control-key row; use the configured key or gesture, or Escape, to hide it. Closing the keyboard clears its modifiers and Caps Lock. Physical typing can continue while it is visible; unmodified arrows, Enter, Tab, and Escape control the keyboard. Desktop modifier shortcuts retain their normal behavior.

Start arguments:

Argument	Meaning
`mode=full\|symbols\|deck`	Initial mode; default `full`.
`layout=grid`	Layout provider.
`display=<target>`	Display and input destination; default the focused display.
`trigger=<key-or-chord>`	Visibility toggle; default `ctrl+space`. Use `none` to disable it.
`source=<keyboard>`	Restrict the key trigger to one registered input source.
`key-id=<id>`	Use a source-local physical key ID instead of a translated key. Requires `source=`; without `trigger=`, no modifiers are required.
`gesture=edge-swipe\|none`	Edge activation; default `edge-swipe`.
`direction=north\|south\|east\|west`	Inward edge-swipe motion; default `north` from the bottom edge.
`touch-source=<source>`	Restrict touch interaction to one registered touch source.
`auto-hide=on\|off`	Hide after emitting a key; default `off`.
`visible=on\|off`	Show immediately on start; default `off`.

For a keyboard without a convenient activation chord, select a key ID from input test <source> and bind it with source= and key-id=. No long-press activation is used. A display must be ready and at least 80 by 64 logical pixels. The keyboard hides on session/focus changes, display geometry changes, and sleep. Status reports visibility, layout, mode, emitted-key count, and the last error. Configuration is volatile; use the selected startup script to start the job automatically after boot.