Setting up an On-Screen Keyboard on the Raspberry Pi

An On-Screen Keyboard is the most convenient way to control Raspberry Pi if you don’t have a physical keyboard or it is broken. You can use it using your mouse for normal screen display, or if you have a touchscreen panel, you can use it via tapping.

In this article, we will show you the method through which you can easily set up an On-Screen Keyboard on Raspberry Pi.

Setting up an On-Screen Keyboard on the Raspberry Pi

Setting up On-Screen Keyboard on Raspberry Pi is a pretty simple task as it doesn’t require installing any dependencies of packages on your system. For installation, use the following steps:

Step 1: Update Packages

Before you install On-screen Keyboard on Raspberry, you must ensure that the packages are updated on your system. To confirm it, you can apply the following command:

The update time depends on your internet speed and the size of the packages so you have to wait till it finishes.

Step 2: Install On-Screen Keyboard on Raspberry Pi

After updating the packages, you can begin installing On-Screen keyboard on Raspberry Pi. Here, we are installing “matchbox-keyboard”, which is the most suitable one to be used on Raspberry Pi. Run the following command to install it on your Raspberry Pi device:

Step 3: Running On-Screen Keyboard on Raspberry Pi

After completing the installation of On-Screen keyboard on Raspberry Pi, you can run it using the following command:

You can also run the On-Screen Keyboard by heading towards the “Accessories” option in the Raspberry Pi main menu.

Adding On-Screen Keyboard Toggle at the Taskbar

Now the next thing is to add On-Screen Keyboard toggle at the taskbar so that whenever your system restarts, you can see it right onto your desktop. To do this method, use the following steps:

Step 1: First, open the toggle-keyboard bash script file at the location “/usr/bin” using the following command:

In the above script file, you have to add the text as given below:

After adding the above line inside the file, save the file using “CTRL+X” keys, add Y to confirm and Enter to exit.

Step 2: Next, you will need to make the bash script file executable which you can do so using the following command:

Step 3: Now, you will have to create a file for Taskbar to read and load the toggle-keyboard on your system. You can do this through following command:

Then add the following text in the file:

Save this file.

Step 4: Now, copy the default configuration to your current Raspberry Pi user configuration folder using the following command as we are going to do some modification in the configuration file.

Step 5: Next, open the configuration file using the following command to allow the taskbar to add the On-screen keyboard icon.

Then add the following lines at the end of the file.

Save the file and then reboot your device. After the reboot, you can see that the On-Screen keyboard icon appear on your screen

You can run it by clicking on the On-screen keyboard icon and close it by clicking on the icon again.

At this point, the On-Screen Keyboard is successfully set up on a Raspberry Pi device.

Conclusion

An On-Screen Keyboard is the most effective solution for the Raspberry Pi user who doesn’t want to purchase a keyboard for the device, or the keyboard isn’t functioning properly. Following the above-given guidelines, the users will be able to install and set up an On-Screen keyboard on Raspberry Pi and take full charge of the device using only a mouse.