Dismiss the Android SoftKeyboard Programmatically in a NativeScript App

Be Gone You Damn KeyBoard

If you’re like me you get really frustrated with apps that leave the soft keyboard open when you’ve completed some action that should have closed it. Maybe you completed a form and tapped a ‘Submit’ button, well that keyboard is pointless now so hide the thing please. There are some use cases where you don’t want to but oh well I’m going to tell you how to get rid of it when you want to in your code.

import * as app from 'application';

import { isAndroid } from 'platform';

/**
* Hide the keyboard with a conditional Android platform check.
*/
private hideKeyboard() {

   if (isAndroid) {
      try {
         let activity = app.android.foregroundActivity;
         let Context = app.android.currentContext;
         let inputManager = Context.getSystemService(android.content.Context.INPUT_METHOD_SERVICE);
    inputManager.hideSoftInputFromWindow(activity.getCurrentFocus().getWindowToken(), android.view.inputmethod.InputMethodManager.HIDE_NOT_ALWAYS);
      } catch (err) {
         console.log(err);
      }
}
}

The code is pretty simple and just uses the Android InputMethodManager service and calls the hideSoftInputFromWindow() method. Has worked great in my apps and hopefully it helps you out if you ever need to get rid of the keyboard in your Android NativeScript app.