How do I get a soft/on-screen keyboard on an Android device?

[Kyler Laird]

I've been trying Java VNC applets on and off for a decade or so but finally tried noVNC recently.  I'm delighted.  It's what I've needed all this time.  Now I'm trying to roll it out to a large group of users.

I know some of our users will want to use noVNC from phones and tablets.  I tried from an Android tablet (Samsung) and it didn't work with the built-in browser ("Connect timeout").  I bumped up the timeout (1000 to 4000) and then switched to Firefox.  It connects there.  Looks great!

Unfortunately I'm not getting an on-screen keyboard.  I'm not a big Android user so this might be something everyone else knows how to do but I'm stumped.  How do I send keypress events to noVNC from Android?

Thank you!

--kyler

[sam...@cendio.com]

The Android browser does not support websockets which is a requirement for noVNC.

I am guessing you are connecting to vnc_auto.html, if you connect to vnc.html instead you will get a control bar at the top of the screen. In the control bar there is a button for bringing up the on-screen keyboard.

Note that prior to a fix which was applied to noVNC today the on-screen keyboard did not work in Chrome on Android.

[sam...@cendio.com]

And with "Android browser" I mean that the built-in browser which you where talking about which is different from the Chrome browser for Android.

noVNC works fine in newer versions of both Firefox and Chrome on Android.