Question

I have an issue with focusing a text field on the iPad. Where I use:

$(document).bind("click",function(event) {
    alert('click');
    focusTextArea();
});

The focus is set to the text area, and a keyboard appears. However when called with touchend, focusTextArea is not called and the keyboard is not made visible. My focusTextArea function is:

function focusTextArea() {
    $('#textArea').focus();
}

Does anybody know why this occurs, and how I might be able to get this to work?

TIA,

Adam

Answer 1

Unfortunately, focusing is not possible with the iPad. The only way the focus will be placed in the desired field is when the user ‘clicks’ on the desired field.

Update 2015-01-08:

As explained in this answer by Matt:

…
iOS will only allow focus to be triggered on other elements, from
within a function, if the first function in the call stack was
triggered by a non-programmatic event. In your case, the call to
setTimeout starts a new call stack, and the security mechanism kicks
in to prevent you from setting focus on the input.