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Feature #508

open

Activate Keyboard incognito mode

Added by Lukas ThyWalls about 5 years ago. Updated about 4 years ago.

Status:
In Progress
Priority:
3.x
Assignee:
Soren Stoutner
Start date:
11/05/2019
Due date:
% Done:

0%

Estimated time:

Description

Using Firefox Focus, i realized using this kind of mode (As well as incognito mode in Firefox Android, Firefox Fenix or Chrome) the keyboard enters in some kind of "Incognito mode" that seems to not remember any word (at least), something that happens with GBoard and AnySoftKeyboard as far as i tested it. With both uses this mode automatically with the browser's mode, although with AnySoftKeyboard you can toggle it at any moment.

This doesn't happen in Privacy Browser, with or without incognito mode. The request is activate the virtual keyboards in that mode, if it's posible with an option to make it work "Always" or "Only in incognito mode".

Thanks.

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 #1

Updated by Soren Stoutner about 5 years ago

  • Assignee set to Soren Stoutner
  • Priority changed from 3.x to Next Release

I will have to look into how this is activated. I would imagine it isn't that difficult to do.

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 #2

Updated by Soren Stoutner about 5 years ago

  • Priority changed from Next Release to 3.x

The command for requesting an incognito keyboard is IME_FLAG_NO_PERSONALIZED_LEARNING as described at https://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/inputmethod/EditorInfo#IME_FLAG_NO_PERSONALIZED_LEARNING.

It is quite easy to enable this flag on EditTexts like the URL bar at the top of the screen. However, it is nearly impossible to enable it on WebViews. This is because the WebView sets a bunch of IME options based on the type of field being edited, and there is no mechanism for overriding these settings to add IME_FLAG_NO_PERSONALIZED_LEARNING.

Google has done this with Chrome using a custom IME Adapter:
https://github.com/chromium/chromium/blob/55f44515cd0b9e7739b434d1c62f4b7e321cd530/content/public/android/java/src/org/chromium/content/browser/input/ImeAdapterImpl.java

Firefox does something similar, but it isn't clear to me if it is functionality that is publicly exposed in GeckoView.

I have not been able to find any browser based on WebView that implements this functionality.

I considered enabling this for the URL bar and leaving the WebView for later, but the user experience seems jarring that way and I anticipate it would lead to a lot of user complaints assuming that something is wrong with their system (I don't like to implement features that are half-baked).

I think I will hold off on this for a while. Perhaps Google will add controls to WebView for this. Otherwise, it will probably require waiting until the 4.x series with Privacy WebView to implement.

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 #3

Updated by Soren Stoutner about 4 years ago

  • Status changed from New to In Progress
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