How to change the on screen keyboard using c#

Question

i know the title don't give a full explanation of what I'm trying to achieve but i had trouble finding the right words for my problem.

I'm working on a touch application. Because the application shouldn't look like the average Windows Application, I used WPF and provided most of my controls with special styles.

However, I wanted to use an own on screen keyboard instead of the osk or tabtip.exe provided by windows, because I wanted to be able to change a few things.

The problem is, that if i touch a textbox for example, a little button pops up right at the textbox, which opens the on screen keyboard (from windows of course). I don't want that behaviour. Is there a way to disable this button or change the code, so that this button opens my own keyboard instead of the osk/tabtip? Any help appreciated.

Greetings, Stefan

Answer 1

To disable that behavior:

In the Options for the built-in Windows keyboard, uncheck the "Use the Input Panel tab" option.

To use your own keyboard:

You'll have to design your own and then handle the Enter/Leave events on your main application's text controls and then show/hide your keyboard accordingly. Make sure you don't steal focus from your application when pressing keys in your custom keyboard.