I recently disabled the default keyboard, and after a reboot, I couldn’t type my password anymore. It seems that /e/ doesn’t recognize OpenBoard before unlocking the device. My only hope (apart from a factory reset) is to purchase a USB-C to USB connector and hope that my old keyboard works.
Moral of the story: don’t disable the default keyboard.
And to the devs: perhaps don’t let curious yet slightly dim tinkerers like me disable it in the first place, or at least add a warning message?
A few months ago I made the same mistake on stock Android. Before this happened I had thankfully enabled USB debugging on the device, and had set it to trust my computer, so I was able to use adb from a terminal to simulate keypresses on the phone.
I can understand why one would want to disable stock Gboard on Android, to prevent it from possibly sending any data to Google. On e-OS this should not be necessary, as the default AOSP keyboard should not (though I haven’t verified this myself) be sending data to Google.
I reproduced this on e-OS today and found that, like in stock Android, it does warn you that Openboard cannot start before the system is launched (see screenshot). But I do think this message is somewhat easy to misinterpret (I did misunderstand it myself!)!
Maybe a simple explanation : the keyboard app is running as user, so it is not available at boot time.
I’ll try to install it as system app (lots of posts about that, here).
Just so that it is mentioned:
If you use a PIN instead of a password, the keyboard won’t be necessary for the input, the PIN prompt uses its own UI.
On e-OS this should not be necessary, as the default AOSP keyboard should not (though I haven’t verified this myself) be sending data to Google.
True, I’m not sure why I wanted to disable it in the first place. An overzealous drive to tidy up, I guess. Or a remnant from my Android days where stock apps were actively harmful.
it does warn you that Openboard cannot start before the system is launched (see screenshot).
Funny, I don’t remember seeing this message at all, but I tried it myself and there it was! So my ‘advice’ to add a warning message was completely misplaced, and I just haven’t been paying attention. Thanks for the reply!
