Android Quick Tip: EditText with DONE Button That Closes the Keyboard

by Tony Lukasavage on Thursday, June 2nd, 2011 | comments 11 Comments | Tags: , ,

Android Quick Tip

Close the keyboard when you click ‘DONE’… seems like a simple task, right? Unfortunately, clicking ‘DONE’ or the ‘RETURN’ button in even a single line Android EditText will not drop focus and close the soft keyboard. In most cases it will just generate a new line of text. So what do you have to do if you want to close the soft keyboard by clicking ‘DONE’?

First you need to set the android:imeOptions attribute equal to “actionDone” for your target EditText as seen below. That will change your ‘RETURN’ button in your EditText’s soft keyboard to a ‘DONE’ button.

* example_edittext.xml

 
    android:id="@+id/edittext_done"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:hint="Enter some text"
    android:imeOptions="actionDone"
    />

Now we need to create a custom OnEditorActionListener for the target EditText that will recognize when the ‘DONE’ button has been clicked. In it we override the onEditorAction() method, get an instance of the InputMethodManager, and use it to close the soft keyboard. Here’s the code for the custom OnEditorActionListener class:

* DoneOnEditorActionListener.java

class DoneOnEditorActionListener implements OnEditorActionListener {
    @Override
    public boolean onEditorAction(TextView v, int actionId, KeyEvent event) {
        if (actionId == EditorInfo.IME_ACTION_DONE) {
            InputMethodManager imm = (InputMethodManager)v.getContext().getSystemService(Context.INPUT_METHOD_SERVICE);
            imm.hideSoftInputFromWindow(v.getWindowToken(), 0);
            return true;   
        }
        return false;
    }
}

Now go to the onCreate() method of the Activity that contains the target EditText. We’ll call it SampleActivity here. In here you will assign the new DoneOnEditorActionListener to the target EditText via the setOnEditorActionListener() method.

* SampleActivity.java

public class SampleActivity extends Activity {      
    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.sample_activity_layout); // sample_activity_layout contains our target EditText, target_edittext
 
        EditText targetEditText = (EditText)findViewById(R.id.target_edittext); 
        targetEditText.setOnEditorActionListener(new DoneOnEditorActionListener());
 
        // The rest of the onCreate() code
   }
}

And there you go, your target EditText field will now close the soft keyboard whenever you click the ‘DONE’ button. Very handy and not too difficult. Enjoy.

11 Responses to “Android Quick Tip: EditText with DONE Button That Closes the Keyboard”

  1. Jill says:
    February 9, 2012 at 8:00 pm

    That huge confusing mess of code… just to make a common/normal “done” mean “done”?

    Wow.

    And if you have 5 editText boxes… it’s even a bigger mess.

  2. Jill says:
    February 9, 2012 at 8:02 pm

    Does that code only work if the keyboard button says DONE?

    How would I do it if it was a SEARCH button?

  3. Bijaya Guin says:
    April 13, 2012 at 7:16 am

    very Nice Information

  4. Adnan says:
    May 21, 2012 at 2:14 am

    Thanks, It helped me.

  5. Anthony Tannoury says:
    October 24, 2012 at 8:36 am

    Very useful! Thank you very much!

  6. Roger Bacon says:
    October 25, 2012 at 6:37 am

    Maybe it is easier to put an line
    android:singleLine=”true”
    into the edittext tag in the layout xml file …

  7. Iram Bukhari says:
    December 7, 2012 at 1:43 am

    Thanks for sharing….it helped me.

  8. Ante says:
    January 22, 2013 at 4:35 pm

    Excellent, thanks !

  9. Peter from Honolulu says:
    February 22, 2013 at 8:49 pm

    android:imeOptions=”actionDone” doesn’t work but setting

    sets the keyboard RETURN key to DONE but it will also limit the entry to one singe line of text.

  10. Anuj says:
    March 18, 2013 at 11:08 am

    Awesome…. works perfect! Thanks a lot :)

  11. Patrick says:
    April 29, 2013 at 8:33 am

    Thanks this was very helpfull!

    I’ve added v.clearFocus(); to the class to not only hide the keyboard, but also clear the focus :)