Android TV and Google TV

WM Keyboard runs on Android TV and Google TV, and it is driven entirely with the remote. The arrow keys move a ring from key to key, and the centre button types the key the ring is on. Nothing else about the keyboard changes: the same layouts, languages, suggestions and tools are there, on the same engine as on a phone.

Setting it up

1. Install the app on the TV. It appears in the TV’s own launcher, under its own tile, and opens straight into the settings app.
2. Turn the keyboard on in Settings → System → Keyboard (the wording differs between TV makers) and select WM Keyboard as the current keyboard.
3. Open any text field — a search box is easiest. The board comes up as it does anywhere else; press an arrow key and the ring appears on the spacebar.

If you are sideloading rather than installing from a store, the same APK works: there is no separate television build.

Typing with the remote

Press	What happens
Arrows	Move the ring one key
Left or right at the end of a row	Wrap around to the other end of the same row
Up from the top row	Reach the suggestions, then the toolbar, then leave the keyboard for the app behind it
Centre, or Enter	Type the key the ring is on
Centre, held	Open that key’s long-press alternates — or repeat it, for the keys that repeat
Centre, in an open popup	Type the highlighted alternate
Back, in an open popup	Close it without typing
Back	Close whatever the keyboard has open, then hide the keyboard

Holding an arrow repeats it, so crossing the board is one long press rather than ten short ones.

The ring reaches the toolbar and the suggestion strip as well as the keys: ring up off the top row of keys and it lands on the words, then on the toolbar buttons above them. Taking a suggestion is one button press instead of spelling the rest of the word.

Everything a key does when it is tapped, it does when the ring types it: ?123 switches layer, the globe switches language, the emoji key opens the emoji picker. Inside a tool the ring becomes the tool’s own highlight — the same one a physical keyboard’s arrow keys drive — so the emoji grid, the clipboard and the rest are navigable with the remote too. See Hardware keyboards for what that highlight can do.

The board becomes a grid

On a television the keyboard you are already on is drawn as a rectangle: every row exactly ten columns, every key one column wide, each key squarely above and below its neighbours. It is the shape every TV keyboard converges on, and the reason is the remote — one press right always travels the same distance, so nothing about the board is a surprise.

What it does with your layout:

• The letters keep their rows and their order. That order is the thing you already know. A row too long for the grid — a Cyrillic board’s eleven — is split into equal parts (six and five) rather than spilling one key onto a line of its own.
• Shift and backspace flank the last letter row, where a phone keyboard already draws them, one column each.
• A short row is filled with the punctuation your layout was carrying on its bottom row: on QWERTY the full stop finishes the home row and the comma sits beside m, exactly as a TV board draws them. If a layout has none to spare, the grid fills from . , ? ' - /.
• The bottom row carries caret arrows — ◀ ▶ — beside the layer switch, the spacebar and Enter. They are not decoration: the remote’s own arrows move the ring, so without these there is no way to put the cursor back into the middle of a word.

Because it is a transform rather than a layout, you keep your own alphabet: type Russian, Greek, Hindi or Bangla on a set-top box and you get your letters, in your order, on the same grid.

Two kinds of board are left exactly as authored: the ambiguous ones (T9 and Compact QWERTY), which are already big-key grids meant to be aimed at, and the pads whose geometry is the feature — kana flick, braille, morse, the Chinese shape pads.

What a television changes by itself

A TV has no touchscreen, so the features that need a finger are switched off there and stay off however they are set on your phone:

• Glide typing, and handwriting on the keys
• The split and floating boards, and the one-handed rail
• The press-and-hold preview bubble
• Key-press vibration — a TV box has nothing to vibrate

Three more are defaults rather than overrides, so a number you choose on the TV is kept:

• The number row is on, because reaching a digit through a layer switch costs a button press
• The keys are slightly shorter than a phone’s (40 dp), so six rows do not fill the screen
• The board fills 60% of the width and sits in the middle, which keeps it clear of the edges older sets crop, and keeps the keys close enough together that the ring does not have far to travel
• The board is drawn as the grid described above

Change any of them under WM Keyboard›Layout & size and your choice sticks.

Options

WM Keyboard›Typing›Physical keyboard›Arrow keys move over the keys

The ring itself. On by default on a television, off by default everywhere else — on a phone or a laptop the arrow keys belong to the text field you are typing into, and a keyboard that took them would break every cursor movement. Turn it on anywhere if you want to drive the on-screen keys from a physical keyboard’s arrow keys.

WM Keyboard›Typing›Physical keyboard›Arrow keys move a highlight

The highlight inside a tool, which is a separate switch and on everywhere. With the ring on and a tool open, this one is what is moving.

Details & edge cases

• The ring never appears until you press an arrow key. Until then the board looks exactly as it does on a phone. On a keyboard with an Esc key, Escape puts it away again — useful if you switched the ring on beside a physical keyboard and want Enter back.
• Up and down can leave the keyboard; left and right cannot. Leaving upward — past the suggestions and the toolbar — is how the remote gets back to the app’s own controls. Left and right wrap inside the row instead, so spelling a word can never quietly move the app’s selection.
• A layer switch keeps the ring where your eye is. Press ?123 and the ring lands on whichever symbol key is nearest to where it was standing.
• Accents come from a held centre button. It opens the same popup a long press opens on a phone; the arrows walk the entries and the centre button types the highlighted one. Pressing down out of the bottom row closes the popup without typing, which is the remote’s version of sliding your finger back to the key. Keys that repeat while held — backspace, the arrow keys — repeat instead of opening anything, so holding backspace still deletes.
• Voice typing works, and is usually the fastest way to enter a long string on a TV: ring up to the toolbar, land on the microphone and press the centre button. A remote with a microphone button of its own does not route it to the keyboard; the system handles that itself.