Setting the Focus to an Entry in Xamarin.Forms

Issue

This is just a simplified example, but I'm trying to set this up so that when I open up this page in my Application, the first thing that happens is the keyboard pops up ready for the user to type in their response to an Entry field.

    var namelabel = new Label { Text = "What is your name?" };
    var nameentry = new Entry { Placeholder = "Type here..." };
    var colorlabel = new Label { Text = "What's your fav color?" };
    var colorentry = new Entry { Placeholder = "Type here..." };
    Content = new StackLayout {
       Spacing = 15,
       Children = { namelabel, nameentry, colorlabel, colorentry }
    };

How can I set the focus of the page to the first entry? And additionally, after the user has put in their first entry, how could I set this up so that the user could press a "Next" Button on the Keyboard (or something along those lines) and the app will take them to fill in the second entry?

Solution

Use the Focus method

nameentry.Focus();

If you want the focus to be set when your page appears, you should probably do this in the OnAppearing method

    protected override void OnAppearing ()
    {
        base.OnAppearing ();

        nameentry.Focus();
    }

Answered By - Jason