Keyboard display issue on Samsung S25

[tombloemker]

I use a Galaxy S25 and the message box is grounded to the bottom of the screen. When I tap on the message box my keyboard covers it up. Shouldn't the box move up above the keyboard? I need to see what I am typing. Do I need to change a setting?

[markqvist]

It definitely should, and does on all versions of Android I've tested so far, including Android 16 (which I believe the S25 would be running). But I don't have an S25 myself, so I'm a bit curious what's going on here. If anyone else with an S25 could chime in with how it works on their device, it would be interesting to hear.

[Glenenen]

I have an S25 Ultra. What tombloemker said is exactly what is happening with my device. You can't see what your typing because the keyboard covers it. To use it I have to either hope I'm typing correctly and check when done or keep closing the keyboard to see what I've typed. Sometimes when I switch to the numeric keyboard on Microsoft keyboard, it performs in the manner that it should. So far this has been only issue I've had with app. But is almost a deal breaker. I try and show others this amazing protocol and interest is lost once seeing the keyboard complication. What I'm trying to say is, what he said. :-)

[markqvist]

Yeah, it does sound incredibly frustrating.

Not sure this will have any effect, but given how little information there is to go by here, it might be worth trying out: Could you try enabling "block predictive text" in Preferences? (scroll all the way down to the bottom)

[tombloemker]

I hope I understand what you are asking for, I didn't see any predictive settings within Sideband, I did not find a phone or keyboard specific switch to disable predictive features. I only was able to disable predictive nuances without effect.
Unrelated, I noticed when the keyboard is covering the input box, if I touch the previous messages above they immediately snap up and lock and do not scroll. If I was in a conversation, I assume each message would append at the bottom?
This got me thinking, is it possible to start the input box at the top so the keyboard is still at the bottom? Then have messages appending below the input box?

[tombloemker]

Ahh, missed it earlier, prefferances, scroll to input options and localization, last item is "Block predictive text" which was off.

[markqvist]

By the way, are you using a non-standard keyboard or something? Just tried it on an S24, and there it works fine.

[markqvist]

Hmm, that is really strange. Thanks for the info. I'll have to investigate this further. Kind of hoped it was just some weird incompatibility with a custom keyboard (even though I haven't seen that before either), but seems to be something else. I'll let you know if I think of anything else to try.

[tombloemker]

I'm not complaining but offering any information that might lead to a solution.
I tried resetting the Samsung keyboard to factory default. No change. I have been on a debug team before I tried every possible feature and setting in the keyboard with only one solution which was to select the translate icon on the keyboard toolbar. This moved the input box above the keyboard as expected. I also noticed the default "message type" text within the input box can extend beyond the box. I'm not sure this is related. Also, I can't use the gesture palm swipe while on sideband to capture a screen shot.

[markqvist]

I'm wondering if this is something related to the UI scaling then. Could you try setting the UI Scaling Factor (in preferences) to a somewhat lower value and see if it works? I'm guessing here, but on the S25 with a high-res display, the default scaling is probably 2.0 or even 3.0. Maybe try setting it to 2.0 first, and if that does not decrease the size of UI elements, try setting it a bit lower, like 1.75 or 1.50. Once the UI elements are rendered smaller (you have to restart sideband for the scaling changes to take effect), try to see if the issue still occurs.

[tombloemker]

It was set at 0.0, changed to 2.0, 1.75 & 1.5, restarted each time with no change to keyboard covering input box. Another interesting tidbit, I pasted a large amount of text into the input box and it wrapped into the tiny default box and didn't expand at all.

[markqvist]

Excuse me, did you just paste a random answer from ChatGPT or something, without even bothering to check if the proposed "fix" has already been present in the code for 3 years?

https://github.com/markqvist/Sideband/blob/main/sbapp/main.py#L582