Simple TabTip / Virtual Keyboard integration for WPF apps on Win 8.1 and Win 10

The easiest way to install the WPFTabTip is using the Package Manager Console in Visual Studio:

PM> Install-Package WPFTabTip

One line of code in your startup logic, and you good to go!

TabTipAutomation.BindTo<TextBox>();

You can bind TabTip automation logic to any UIElement. Virtual Keyboard will open when any such element will get focus, and it will close when element will lose focus. Not only that, but TabTipAutomation will move UIElement (or Window) into view, so that TabTip will not block focused element.

By default TabTip automation will occur only if no hardware keyboard is detected.

You can change that behavior by setting TabTipAutomation.IgnoreHardwareKeyboard to any of the following values:

public enum HardwareKeyboardIgnoreOptions
    {
        /// <summary>
        /// Do not ignore any keyboard.
        /// </summary>
        DoNotIgnore,

        /// <summary>
        /// Ignore keyboard, if there is only one, and it's description 
        /// can be found in ListOfHardwareKeyboardsToIgnoreIfSingleInstance.
        /// </summary>
        IgnoreIfSingleInstanceOnList,

        /// <summary>
        /// Ignore keyboard, if there is only one.
        /// </summary>
        IgnoreIfSingleInstance,

        /// <summary>
        /// Ignore all keyboards
        /// </summary>
        IgnoreAll
    }

If you want to ignore specific keyboard you should set TabTipAutomation.IgnoreHardwareKeyboard to IgnoreIfSingleInstanceOnList, and add keyboard description to TabTipAutomation.ListOfHardwareKeyboardsToIgnoreIfSingleInstance.

To get description of keyboards connected to machine you can use following code:

new ManagementObjectSearcher(new SelectQuery("Win32_Keyboard")).Get()
                .Cast<ManagementBaseObject>()
                .SelectMany(keyboard =>
                    keyboard.Properties
                        .Cast<PropertyData>()
                        .Where(k => k.Name == "Description")
                        .Select(k => k.Value as string))
                .ToList();

To specify keyboard layout to be used with certain element you can set InputScope property in xaml to one of the following:

• Default
• Url
• EmailSmtpAddress
• Number