Touch Keyboard And Handwriting Panel Service Windows 11

[Charise Farag]

Youmay have noticed that, mysteriously, Windows' Touch Keyboard icon keeps appearing in your system tray (or the actual keyboard pops up). If you're as annoyed by the phantom appearance as we are, you'll definitely want to take advantage of this simple solution to permanently banish it.

Microsoft has informed us that, on the latest versions of Windows 10, disabling the service with the instructions below will prevent you from typing in the Start menu, Settings window, and all UWP apps. It will also cause other problems. We recommend not following these instructions---we don't have the original problem that led us to write this article, which appears to have been solved.

There are two primary situations where you may find the "touch keyboard" icon appearing in your system tray. The first, and more common situation, is that you have a laptop or convertible tablet running Windows 8 or 10 and that device has a touch screen. In this case, Windows is attempting to always make the on-screen touch keyboard accessible to you in the event that you wish to use the device in touch-only mode. If you never use the touch screen on your device, the presence of the icon and accidentally loading the on-screen keyboard can get very annoying very quickly.

The second, and less common, situation is that you have connected to your Windows machine with Windows Remote Desktop Connection or a similar remote desktop solution and Windows has turned on the touch keyboard so that you can, if need be, use your mouse or finger (if connecting via touch screen device) to type on the remote computer.

There seems to be a minor bug in both instances where even after you turn the keyboard off by the obvious mechanism, by right clicking on the icon and unchecking "show touch keyboard button", it returns shortly thereafter, or upon rebooting. There is no way to banish the icon using the regular taskbar and system tray customizations. In addition to that more common annoyance, some Windows users even run into the touch keyboard popping up unexpectedly when triggered by an unseen event--if you don't even need the touch keyboard this is particularly annoying.

If this albeit small intrusion into your system tray (or a bigger intrusion right onto your desktop) is painfully irritating to you then it's easy enough, if you know where to look, to permanently banish the touch keyboard icon.

First let's look at how to get rid of the icon (which might suffice for some readers) and then how to banish the touch keyboard application altogether so it neither appears in the system tray nor randomly pops up.

Two small notes before we continue. First, you need to have administrative access to the computer in question to follow along with this tutorial. Second, the touch keyboard that is included with Windows 8 and Windows 10 as part of the touch screen integration (and which appears on all hardware the OS is installed on, regardless of whether it is a touch screen device or not) is not the on-screen keyboard app that has been built into Windows for ages. By disabling the touch screen keyboard you are not removing the on-screen keyboard app--it will remain installed and available for those emergency keyboard failure situations, should the need arise.

This is the first step, and the step that should suffice for the majority of users. The touch keyboard loads as a Windows Service by default. The most direct way to get rid of the annoyance it is to simply disable the service. To do so open up the Services menu by pressing Windows+R on your keyboard and typing "services.msc" in the resulting run dialog box.

In the Services menu that pops up, click on the "Name" column to sort the services by name, and then scroll until you locate the "Touch Keyboard and Handwriting Panel Service". Double click on the entry.

If you find that the touch keyboard pops up again, despite disabling the service as you did in the previous step, then you may need to take a slightly more drastic approach to getting it out of your face: by disabling the actual executable.

This step is simple and easily reversible, but does involve messing around with your Windows system files, so you need to carefully follow the instructions. To rename the necessary file, press Windows+R to pull up the run dialog box and enter the following location:

Press Enter to jump to the folder and then scroll down until you find the "TabTip.exe" file. We're going to make some minor changes to the file that include changing ownership of the file (so we can rename it) and then renaming it so it no longer runs. These changes are completely reversible should you wish to enable access to the touch screen keyboard at a future date.

Open up the exact menus we just opened--right click and select "Properties" then click on "Advanced" to take us back to where we were. In the "Advanced Security Settings" click on "Change permissions", located in the lower left side of the screen, then click on "Administrators" to change the settings for that group.

Rename the file "TabTip.exe.bak". This will change the extension from .exe to .bak, as far as Windows is concerned, and the file will no longer be executable--thus anything that triggers the touch keyboard to pop up will fail to do so. You can reverse this at any time by returning to this folder and renaming the file "TabTip.exe" without the ".bak" on the end.

Although it took more than a few steps, that's all there is to it. If you were annoyed as could be because Windows kept throwing up the tray icon or the actual touch screen keyboard, despite your best efforts to get rid of it, you can now use Windows without a feature you don't even want getting in your way.

I am using ArcGIS Pro. When clicking onto the 'Add Field' button upon opening the attributes table, the message 'An error was encountered loading files' appears. This steams from the 'Touch keyboard and handwriting panel service' being disabled. I am a postgrad using the University's computers. When contacting my university's IT services, they said that they are unable to enable the service due to it being enabled on all university computers. Is there away to get around this allowing me to add a field without the use of the windows service.

If you are unable to use the `Add` button from the attribute table to create a new field a possible work around could be to run a Geoprocessing Tool that creates fields. `Calculate Field` comes to mind. One could use that tool and define the new field from there. Should this geoprocessing tool be able to be run a new field would be added to the attribute table.

It's lovely, isn't it. It's the Windows 8 on-screen keyboard, except I don't need or want to see it. I have a Lenovo X1 Carbon Touch and it already has a keyboard. I will never ever want to use the Windows 8 touch keyboard. Unfortunately there is no checkbox or "just turn it off" way to disable the keyboard with a supported option.

This will of course, disable both the touch keyboard and handwriting service, so you'll lose handwriting recognition. This was totally worth it to me and has made my touch screen laptop experience much better, especially when I'm using the Full Screen Browser. I hope this helps! Note that if you have a touch only device, or a detachable keyboard, you could get yourself into a tough spot without an on-screen keyboard, so just have your mouse ready and a plan to turn this service back on if you get in trouble. ;) If you're having any other problems with Windows 8, I encourage you to check out my simple "Windows 8 Missing Instruction Manual" blog post and YouTube video. It's helped a lot of people and could help you!

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

I recently updated my machine to Windows 10 having PowerBuilder previously installed. It does not get past the splash screen. I have attempted to uninstalled and re-installed with no success. Any ideas?

You can either use the touch screen by swiping from the left edge to the right to open Task View or using your keyboard you can use the Windows key + the tab key to open Task View. Select the PowerBuilder task and you can proceed.

I am not having a problem with getting to the IDE. I am stating that I can get to PB 12.6 IDE without having to turn off touch screen service by using the Task View feature of Windows 10. I can see the 12.6 IDE in Task View and once I select the IDE it opens normally...no need to disable the touch screen.

If you have not already down so - please make sure that you log this problem with SAP Technical Support and open a ticket for this issue. If you do not have an SAP support plan - please use this alternative: Report PowerBuilder 12.6 Regression Bugs

Additionally, we were encountering issues when opening a grid datawindow with a lot of rows and columns. After displaying the results promptly, the application would hang for another 10 seconds after retrieval. This problem disappeared when the "Touch Keyboard..." service was disabled.

Yes, I thought that might be the case. Playing around with the Task Manager was only a poor workaround for the actual problem. For some reason, PB's IDE & PBVM do not interact well with those two services when active. It's a problem that I can remember being reported even back into PB v11.5.

The problem with touch services also seems to affect the PB installation process as well. I also think that these problems are Intel CPU related as I can't replicate these problems on my AMD processors. Very weird!

"If you find your PowerBuilder Splash Screen is not closing on your touch screen laptop just right click on your taskbar click on ShowDesktop till your desktop shown, and do right click on your taskbar again, and click on Show Open Window. Woalaaaa.... your PowerBuilder IDE is showing. you can also use shortcut WinKey+D twice (first to show desktop second to show open windows)"

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