The Intrusive On-Screen Keyboard
Windows 10 is designed to bridge the gap between traditional desktop PCs and touchscreen tablets. As a result, it includes a feature where tapping a text field on a touch-enabled screen automatically summons the Touch Keyboard. While this is essential for a Surface tablet without a physical Type Cover attached, it can be incredibly irritating if you are using a 2-in-1 laptop (like a Lenovo Yoga or HP Spectre) in standard laptop mode with a physical keyboard right in front of you.
Sometimes, Windows incorrectly detects that you need the touch keyboard and aggressively pops it up over your screen, obscuring half of your web browser or document. If you never use your device in pure tablet mode, or if you simply prefer to manually summon the on-screen keyboard from the taskbar only when you absolutely need it, you can disable this automatic popup behavior.
How to Disable the Automatic Touch Keyboard
You can turn off the automatic popup in the Windows Typing settings.
- Click the Start button and select the Settings gear icon (or press
Windows Key + I). - In the Settings menu, click on Devices.
- In the left-hand navigation pane, select Typing.
- Scroll down the right-hand pane until you reach the section labelled “Touch keyboard.”
- Look for the toggle switch labelled Show the touch keyboard when not in tablet mode and there’s no keyboard attached.
- Toggle the switch to the Off position.
From now on, clicking or tapping a text box will simply place your cursor there. The massive on-screen keyboard will no longer slide up and hijack your screen space unless you explicitly click the keyboard icon in your system tray.