Android emulator doesn't take keyboard input - SDK tools rev 20

Issue

I've upgraded the SDK tools to revision 20 (from 18) and since the upgrade, the emulator doesn't seem to accept input from laptop's keyboard. But only using the emulator's own 'soft' keyboard (that appears when an input field is focused).

I've tried reinstalling the SDK tools (and the whole SDK for that matter), uninstalled and reinstalled Eclipse Android plugins, re-created emulator devices. But none of that seem to help and its driving me mad. Its hopeless to key-in using a laptop's trackpad.

Has anyone encountered this problem?

Solution

Update

As of SDK rev 21 the Android Virtual Device Manager has an improved UI which resolves this issue. I have highlighted some of the more important configuration settings below:

If you notice that the soft (screen-based) main keys Back, Home, etc. are missing from your emulator you can set hw.mainKeys=no to enable them.

Original answer

Even though the developer documentation says keyboard support is enabled by default it doesn't seem to be that way in SDK rev 20. I explicitly enabled keyboard support in my emulator's config.ini file and that worked!

Add: hw.keyboard=yes

To: ~/.android/avd/<emulator-device-name>.avd/config.ini

Similarly, add hw.dPad=yes if you wish to use the arrow-keys to navigate the application list.

Reference: http://developer.android.com/tools/devices/managing-avds-cmdline.html#hardwareopts

On Mac OS and Linux you can edit all of your emulator configurations with one Terminal command:

for f in ~/.android/avd/*.avd/config.ini; do echo 'hw.keyboard=yes' >> "$f"; done

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On a related note, if your tablet emulator is missing the BACK/HOME buttons, try selecting WXGA800 as the Built-in skin in the AVD editor:

Or by manually setting the skin in config.ini:

skin.name=WXGA800
skin.path=platforms/android-16/skins/WXGA800

(example is for API 16)

Answered By - James Wald