Android simulate key press

Question

How can I programmatically simulate a key press on a Droid? I would like to mimic a manual key press (appearing on the droid that someone is pressing a key but it is being

Answer 1

You can use instrumentation, ie following code called from onCreate of your activity will cause menu to be opened and closed multiple times:

    new Thread(new Runnable() {         
        @Override
        public void run() {
            try {
            Instrumentation inst = new Instrumentation();
            for ( int i = 0; i < 10; ++i ) {
                inst.sendKeyDownUpSync(KeyEvent.KEYCODE_MENU);
                Thread.sleep(2000);
                inst.sendKeyDownUpSync(KeyEvent.KEYCODE_BACK);
                Thread.sleep(2000);
            }
            }
            catch(InterruptedException e){
            }
        }   
    }).start();

...but I am not sure if this is what you are after

Answer 2

If you have a view that want to consume the event you can use BaseInputConnection class and its sendKeyEvent method.

To use it you will need to specify a target view (e.g an EditText) that will receive the KeyEvent. For example:

EditText editText;
BaseInputConnection inputConnection = new BaseInputConnection(editText, true);
inputConnection.sendKeyEvent(new KeyEvent(KeyEvent.ACTION_DOWN, KeyEvent.KEYCODE_POUND));

The result of this is like user would actually pressed # key (while having the edit text focused).