react-native: Property autoCapitalize don't work on Android

Just in case you are being caught out by this: autoCapitalize only affects the phone’s software keyboard capitalisation when inputting text, but typing into your pc’s keyboard into your emulator will not be auto capitalised.

I haven’t seen any issues using autoCapitalize on v0.38.0

Bump

I met this problem when keyboardType define on android, without it autoCapitalize works fine. Here is a demo on expo. RN: 0.55.2

Remove keyboardType=“default” just like @Proberts did working for me

I had to explicitly add autoCapitalize="sentences" to make it work like expected although the doc says it’s the default value.

The bug is still present. All autoCapitalize settings are ignored except none.

Environment:

• RN 0.51.0
• OS Android 6.0 MRA58K
• Device Xiaomi Redmi Note 4

I’ve done a little more digging and it looks like this is also related to the keyboardType property. If keyboardType is set AND margin or padding is also set in the style property, autoCapitalize is ignored. #11776

I can confirm there is something fishy, as it works, or not, depending on the other attributes in the TextInput element.

I managed to create a minimal code that can reproduce the issue:

<TextInput
    autoCapitalize="words"
    onContentSizeChange={(event) => null}
    style={{paddingTop: 0, backgroundColor: "rgba(255,100,100,1)", color: "rgb(0,179,143)"}}
    keyboardType="default"
    multiline={false}
    onChangeText={(text) => this.setState({text})}
    value={this.state.text}
    selectionColor="#00F"
/>

What is weird is that if you use this snippet as is (I added it in a freshly created android react-native project), the autoCapitalize=“words” and autoCapitalize=“characters” are not respected and the keyboard only displays lowercase characters (ie. the bug appears). It works fine for autoCapitalize=“sentences” though.

Now, remove any of the other attributes, onContentSizeChange, style, keyboardType, multiline, or selectionColor, and now it works (the keyboard displays uppercase for the first letters of words).

I reproduced it on several versions of the API (19, 22, 23), and the bug appears consistently as I described above.

@jonaslu was this on a real device or the Android emulator?

If the latter make sure you aren’t typing on your computer’s keyboard. (See https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/8932#issuecomment-265098801)

@PoliakovMaksym Hmm. I’m on Expo SDK 24, which is RN 0.51.0. Running on Android 7.0. It worked for me. Must be another issue that’s affecting your app.

@colinwong This ‘solution’ isn’t working in RN 0.51.0. Just tested it.

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