Focus Management

Programmatic focus

Support for programmatic focus is fully implemented on all Uno Platform targets and matches the logic provided by WinUI. To use programmatic focus, utilize the Microsoft.UI.Xaml.Input.FocusManager class and its static methods. For detailed documentation on its methods check the comments provided by IntelliSense in Visual Studio, see FocusManager source code, or the official WinUI documentation.

Keyboard focus

Keyboard focus handling support is generally available on all targets except iOS. On iOS you can opt-in to enable experimental support by setting the related flag:

#if __IOS__
WinRTFeatureConfiguration.Focus.EnableExperimentalKeyboardFocus = true;
#endif

The feature requires additional testing to verify all edge cases on Android and iOS. In a future release, we will switch the experimental support to be enabled by default.

Disabling initial focus on Page

The focus management logic in UWP/WinUI sets initial focus on Page that is being loaded (for example during navigation) if no element in the app is currently focused. This may cause an input element like TextBox to get focused automatically. This may not be a desirable behavior though, as it will cause the virtual keyboard on mobile platforms to open up. To avoid this initial focus, please set IsTabStop of the Page to false:

<Page
   ...
   IsTabStop="False">
   ...
</Page>

Alternatively, you can set focus explicitly to some other UI element by calling element.Focus(FocusState.Programmatic) in the code-behind - ideally in the Loaded event handler or in OnNavigatedTo override.