Forum Discussion
Google keyboard not appearing automatically
Hi Lizzie, we're good at this point. We were able to find the app config setting to just force the on-screen keyboard to always show. I did see that a new Gboard version came out early last week, but we haven't had a chance yet to see if the issue was also resolved in Gboard itself. Does Google publish release notes for apps like Gboard?
This is a great example of why I don't trust automatic updates of apps from Google Play for mission critical devices. The Gboard team has broken or changed the behavior of Gboard for the worse on several recent occasions leading to instability of line of business devices. Since you are using Zebra devices you should strongly consider their Enterprise Keyboard that you can have better version control over.
Notably Zebra has an article published for this specific issue right now. I have not checked but hopefully there is a Managed Configuration exposed for this option.
https://supportcommunity.zebra.com/s/article/000033862?language=en_US
The bigger issue, in my opinion, is trusting automatic updates to apps coming from Google Play installing on line of business devices.
We might have to go back to using EKB, but really never would have thought Google could mess something up like this with something as "simple" as a keyboard that probably 99% of Android users use, ugh. We've had the discussion multiple times about allowing automatic updates and we just haven't come up with a workable alternative that doesn't result in arduous amounts of admin overhead and QA work to validate every single app update that comes down. We might have to leverage the "postpone" option for updates, but that is going to come with it's own set of issues.
