How to disable the standard keyboard app?

frisbee655

I am using a custom keyboard app and don't want the default one to ever be enabled. But whenever I turn it off it always comes back after restart (of user profile switch). What's the best way to prevent system apps from starting after restart?

Oggyo

frisbee655
For me, it works as expected. I have an additional keyboard and I can turn off the default in Settings > System > Keyboard > On-screen keyboard. The selected state persists during the profile switching and even reboots.
Sometimes after the OS update, it gets turned on, but this is not a big deal as you can repeat the steps above = 10 sec.

Dumdum

As far as I'm aware, the system keyboard is something you can't uninstall. If your own installed keyboard is uninstalled for any reason, the system keyboard needs to be there to fall back on, otherwise you can't use your device. You also shouldn't be disabling system apps anyway, in case it causes breakage.

Dumdum

Dumdum
Just want to say here, that I somehow interpreted this as uninstalling and not disabling the app. My bad. What I said still stands, but isn't quite relevant to OP's question.

frisbee655

Oggyo hmm, I honestly have no idea why it comes back for me. Could it be because the second profile has the default keyboard app?

AlphaElwedritsch

I have installed heliboard and futo. Both + the aosp are all three activated.
I used the heliboard and tested the futo.
The last selected one always remains active. It never automatically switches back to the aosp for me. Pixel 7a

But I only use the main profile.

Oggyo

frisbee655
On my other profiles, I have no other keyboards, only the default one. So, no idea. Maybe it was not registered well or something similar, just guessing.

What is your alternative keyboard? Mine is HeliBoard which exists in the owner profile only.

snafu

I have this problem too. In the main profile everything is working as expected, I can deactivate the default keyboard and it also remembers my 3rd party keyboard when I enable it. On all other profiles it always falls back to the AOSP keyboard once I leave the profile. In the other profiles I also can't deactivate the AOSP keyboard because it automatically deactivates the 3rd party keyboard too then for some reason. This means that I always have to switch keyboard when entering another profile which is kind of annoying to be honest.

missing-root

Yes you should be able to disable AOSP Keyboard as input method, once a different one is selected.

And then you can also disable it probably.

I never use it and its fine

other8026

Don't actually disable or "uninstall" the default keyboard. If you do that and replace the default with a keyboard that doesn't support direct boot, you may encounter a situation where no keyboards will work and you're locked out of your profile/phone and the only way to fix it is by deleting the profile or factory resetting the phone.

Make another keyboard the default, but keep the default one as a fallback in case the other one doesn't work.

cosmichorse

Yeah, I'm having the same problem. For secondary profiles, the default keyboard reactivates itself when I logout and login again. At this point, I can only take it as a bug in the system as, again, this is for secondary profiles only, and not for the main profile.

As a test, I may create one more profile, just to test if disabling the default keyboard app altogether actually does break anything. That would be the only workaround for the apparent bug for now. Under normal circumstances, no, it isn't a good idea to disable system apps. But under normal circumstances, users' preferences would still hold the next time they sign in. This isn't, or at least shouldn't be, a normal circumstance.

other8026

cosmichorse I think I have the same issue as you sometimes. I just tap the arrow in the bottom left-hand corner to dismiss the keyboard.

cosmichorse

And, after testing, there actually is no way to easily disable the default keyboard app itself, permanently. I could go the distance on this, and dig deeper, and uninstall it for that temporary keyboard testing profile. But I don't really feel like going that far. It's not worth doing, probably succeeding, encouraging others to do the same, and fighting with the creators of a perfectly good OS, when it probably will just be fixed in a future update. Til then, I guess I will just switch keyboards when logging into other profiles.

BadRobot

FYI,

Post 022025 release the keyboard had reverted to stock from FUTO. Most unpleasant experience once You've used Futo.

I checked phone settings, all seemed in order. ReSelected, Rebooted. No fix.

Fix: Simply long-pressed the spacebar to re-select FUTO.

Could I have changed it by accident? Perhaps, but I feel unlikely given the steps required to action that change. NB. I'm the sole user of the device.