Any way to disable ALT+TAB/WIN+TAB on Bluetooth keyboard in ICS?

SCWells72

Senior Member
Feb 12, 2011
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I'm trying out the Touchpad as an RDP client for my work Windows machine. With a Bluetooth keyboard and iTap RDP, it works very well, but one thing that's annoying is that Android/ICS traps certain key combinations instead of sending them through to Windows, e.g., ALT+TAB (Symbol+Tab on the HP Touchpad BT keyboard) and WIN+TAB (Home+Tab on the HP keyboard). Another one that gets trapped is WIN+E which should open an Explorer window but instead tries to launch the Android email client. Does anyone know if these Android keys can be disabled, ideally just while the RDP client is running, but worst case scenario, across the board?
 

DjDill

Senior Member
Nov 19, 2007
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Brisbane
Did it help ?
I tired this and could not get it to work.. If you have got it working please post.. I have a TF101 and with the local keyboard I really want a way to use the alt tab / windows key tab options.. but both go to Android local... If anyone has a way of getting around this I would love to hear it! :)

ALT TAB locally really is not required when you have the nice button for recent apps ;)
 

SCWells72

Senior Member
Feb 12, 2011
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go to /system/usr/keylayout/ and see which .kl needs to be changed and where. theres a few to look at but you should find one that matches your input device.
As far as I can tell, it's not a keylayout but rather a CyanogenMod-specific enhancement to make Android work more like a desktop OS when used with an external keyboard. The problem is that it acts as a system-level override for those keybindings so that they're not passed to applications such as remote desktop clients. I've considered trying AOKP to see if it does the same thing.

I'm interested in getting a Nexus 10, especially if someone releases a keyboard cover similar to the one for Surface, as a lightweight laptop replacement, especially when used to access a Windows machine via remote desktop, but I have such a heavy dependency on ALT+TAB in my day-to-day habits that it would be pretty annoying to have that key take me to another Android app instead of switching Windows apps. Not a show-stopper, but definitely an annoyance. Hopefully standard Android 4.2 doesn't do this...
 

DjDill

Senior Member
Nov 19, 2007
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Brisbane
I coincided installing Linux on my tf101 as I was so upset about it.. however there is not a easy way... it would be nice to see a option to disable it for in custom roms..

I don't think 4.2 will change the behavior at all.. sadly

Sent from my GT-I9305 using xda app-developers app
 

SCWells72

Senior Member
Feb 12, 2011
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I coincided installing Linux on my tf101 as I was so upset about it.. however there is not a easy way... it would be nice to see a option to disable it for in custom roms..

I don't think 4.2 will change the behavior at all.. sadly

Sent from my GT-I9305 using xda app-developers app
I know this doesn't help many folks here, but the kind folks at Jump Desktop somehow figured out how to circumvent Apple's restrictions on key events in iOS and got full keyboard support going when accessing Windows and Mac machines via RDP and VNC, so that's what I'm using very happily now from my iPad 3.
 

lordofstuff

Member
Jul 19, 2013
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Cleveland
I have created exactly what you need

Hey, all, I don't know if you'll see this, but I figured out where in the android code it intercepts this and fixed it with an xposed module, which you can grab here. http://forum.xda-developers.com/xposed/modules/keyboard-utilities-t2872579/post55350032

---------- Post added at 10:23 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:51 PM ----------

Also, as far as win-E and related shortcuts being consumed, that's handled by an android setting called quicklaunch, which is present in the settings app, but there's no easy way to access it. To get to it, grab nova launcher or tasker or anything else that can launch app's activities directly, then find the quicklaunch activity under the settings app. This is where you register and unregister shortcuts with the windows key and the search key. Long press on the shortcut to clear it. By default, Win-E and a few others are put in for you.
 

Kuuubach

New member
Sep 26, 2019
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Workaround

A bit old question, but i was looking for an answer today, and did not found anything that matches my needs. Not sure if it will satisfy You, but i got a little workaround. Actually you don't need to do anything with your android device, the only thing you need for this is AutoHotkey software on your windows machine + one little script running.

How it works? It remap left ctrl+tab to act like alt+tab. That way you can use ctrl+tab(or any other combination you want) and android has no problem with it.

Script content:
LControl & Tab::AltTab

Hope it helps, it worked for me.