Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge error 'Samsung Keyboard has stopped'

[Mickgee]

Hi, I'm getting desperate and I would be really grateful for some help. I have a Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge and today received a prompt to update the system software (Android 7.0 installed) which I duly did and all seemed to work fine afterwards. I tried to send a text a few hours later and found I kept on getting an error message which said ' Samsung Keyboard has stopped'. I couldn't input into the phone at all and worse still the screen lock was in use and so I couldn't input the password to release it. Fortunately I had a Samsung account and managed to unlock the phone remotely but the device is virtually unusable because I can't type into it.

I had a look at the keyboards available on the phone. I have Swiftkey loaded and enabled as well as Google Voice to Text. The Samsung keyboard is there but is greyed out. I am unable to use the Swiftkey keyboard because the ' Samsung Keyboard has stopped' error message keeps coming up and the SwiftKey keyboard won’t work. Google Voice to Text seems to be working OK. It all seems one very big coincidence that I had updated the phone earlier today and now this has happened. I have never had a problem with the phone up until now.

I thought of doing a factory reset as a last resort and although this is a pain in the rear end, it is not the end of the world as I have most of my data and settings backed up on either Samsung or Google but I can't even seem to do that. If you go through the various menus on the phone to do a factory reset you get asked for a password and I can't type the password in even though I know what it is.

I saw on the forums some instructions about powering the phone down and then depressing the power on button half way up on the right hand edge on the phone at the same time as depressing the + and - volume buttons towards the top left hand edge of the screen. It then said to release the buttons as soon as the 'Samsung' logo appeared and that this would show an Android menu. This didn't happen for me and the phone just went to its standard screen. I guess I must have done something wrong but I don't know what.

I even thought of trying to reinstall the update that I installed this morning but doing this for an Android phone is a completely different thing for me than doing the same thing for (say) a faulty app on a Windows laptop.

I really like the phone and don't want to have to buy a replacement but I am rapidly beginning to think that this is the only way forward. However I don't want to have to pay out that sort of money.

If anyone out there can help me then I would be eternally grateful. I can't believe that I am the only one experiencing this following this recent software update. I can’t help thinking that the update has corrupted in some way but whatever the end result is I can’t type into the phone. Thanks in anticipation.

Mickgee

 

[lucianus_luciferus]

you can clear apps cache by going to settings, device maintenance, storage and tap on clean now
and you can clean system cache like this
switch phone off
press and hold volume up and home button and power phone on while holding them
you will see a menu and using the volume buttons navigate to the option that says wipe cache and press power button to confirm

 

[Fuzzyducky]

You are correct Mickgee you are not the only one having these issues. I created an account for some help as well.

Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge. Same message. I followed the instructions from Lucianus and unfortunately I am still getting the message " Samsung Keyboard has stopped" I too have Swiftkey but even when selecting that as the default keyboard the phone removes that setting and goes back to being the Samsung keyboard.

Much like Mick, could really use some advice on this.

 

[Mickgee]

Thanks for the advice, lucianus_luciferus. I will try this out and see what happens and report back here if I have any luck. The 'Samsung Keyboard has stopped' error is currently there at the moment.

Fuzzyduck, I have found a workaround since I posted my original question but the fault is still there. I tried the following:

(1) I set the default keyboard to 'Swiftkey' (my default when I received the error was the 'Samsung' keyboard). Once I set Swiftkey as default I was able to type as normal;

(2) The time that the error reoccurred was when I attempted to text. I attach Emojis to most of the texts I send. With Swiftkey enabled as the default keyboard I was able to type the text quite happily. When you type a text with the S6 Edge you type the text into a box. To the right of the text input box there is an Emoji symbol and the moment I pressed that to bring up the Emojis then I got the 'Samsung Keyboard has stopped' error. I then went back and changed the default keyboard back to Swiftkey and all worked fine again. So long as I did nothing to launch the Samsung keyboard then all worked fine. The only thing that I found that launched the Samsung keyboard was selecting the Emoji symbol to the right of the box where you compose a text. Provided you didn't do that then the Swiftkey keyboard worked fine for typing texts and with all other apps on my phone. By the way, you can get Emojis with the Swiftkey keyboard by a long press on the 'return' button on the bottom right had corner of the keyboard (at least the version I am using). This didn't bring up the 'Samsung keyboard has stopped' error.My advice based on my experience is to make sure that your default keyboard is 'Swiftkey' . This seems to have worked for me.

(3) The error is still there and what I have described above is a workaround. I am almost certain that this issue has something to do with the system update that I loaded the other day. I don't know this for a fact but it seems a very big coincidence.

(4) My plan is to try what lucianus_luciderus has suggested but if this does not work then I will continue with my workaround in the hope that someone following this forum will know of a fix or alternatively that there will be a future system update that will fix the issue. This isn't very satisfactory but I don't know what else to do short of buying a new phone, which I really don't want to have to do. I was planning to upgrade from the S6 to the S8 early next year anyway.

(5) One final thing that I read in a forum somewhere was to uninstall and reinstall the Samsung Galaxy keyboard app. I couldn't find the app on my phone to uninstall in the first place let alone find it on the Playstore or among the many apps that Samsung continually bombards me with. If you find out how to get hold of the Samsung Galaxy Keyboard app and it works then I'd be grateful to hear about it.

(6) If this issue is to do with the system update that I loaded then does anyone know who you report it to - Samsung or Google or both?

I hope that my suggested workaround works for you. Best of luck.

Mickgee

 

[SHJ2017]

Hi, I'm getting desperate and I would be really grateful for some help. I have a Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge and today received a prompt to update the system software (Android 7.0 installed) which I duly did and all seemed to work fine afterwards. I tried to send a text a few hours later and found I kept on getting an error message which said ' Samsung Keyboard has stopped'. I couldn't input into the phone at all and worse still the screen lock was in use and so I couldn't input the password to release it. Fortunately I had a Samsung account and managed to unlock the phone remotely but the device is virtually unusable because I can't type into it.

I had a look at the keyboards available on the phone. I have Swiftkey loaded and enabled as well as Google Voice to Text. The Samsung keyboard is there but is greyed out. I am unable to use the Swiftkey keyboard because the ' Samsung Keyboard has stopped' error message keeps coming up and the SwiftKey keyboard won’t work. Google Voice to Text seems to be working OK. It all seems one very big coincidence that I had updated the phone earlier today and now this has happened. I have never had a problem with the phone up until now.

I thought of doing a factory reset as a last resort and although this is a pain in the rear end, it is not the end of the world as I have most of my data and settings backed up on either Samsung or Google but I can't even seem to do that. If you go through the various menus on the phone to do a factory reset you get asked for a password and I can't type the password in even though I know what it is.

I saw on the forums some instructions about powering the phone down and then depressing the power on button half way up on the right hand edge on the phone at the same time as depressing the + and - volume buttons towards the top left hand edge of the screen. It then said to release the buttons as soon as the 'Samsung' logo appeared and that this would show an Android menu. This didn't happen for me and the phone just went to its standard screen. I guess I must have done something wrong but I don't know what.

I even thought of trying to reinstall the update that I installed this morning but doing this for an Android phone is a completely different thing for me than doing the same thing for (say) a faulty app on a Windows laptop.

I really like the phone and don't want to have to buy a replacement but I am rapidly beginning to think that this is the only way forward. However I don't want to have to pay out that sort of money.

If anyone out there can help me then I would be eternally grateful. I can't believe that I am the only one experiencing this following this recent software update. I can’t help thinking that the update has corrupted in some way but whatever the end result is I can’t type into the phone. Thanks in anticipation.

Mickgee

Hi There, I started having the same issue, which I would agree coincided with the recent upgrade. I found on another site, that if you enabled emergency mode (which is an option when you hold down the power key) I was able to type in my password, even though I kept getting messages that the samsung keyboard has stopped working. Once I typed it in, I then disabled emergency mode and was able to get back into my phone, at first it was laggy. This is the second time this has happened in the past 3 days, and each time it has been in messages when I was replying to someone - mid message. The first time, I cleared the cache during recovery mode, but that made no difference..I woke up in the middle of the night to my phone on with a keyboard illuminated..strange, so I assumed samsung had pushed an update, but then it happened again this evening. Hope that helps and you didn't have to do the factory reset.

 

[Fuzzyducky]

As Mick sais, its definitely Emoji driven. Without using them the keyboard works absolutely fine as Swiftkey but as soon as you try and select an emoji the default keyboard switches to the Samsung default keyboard and then stops working. Also as Mick sais the advice has been to delete or uninstall the Samsung keyboard app but it is nowhere to be found in the apps list so cant do that. Somewhat frustrating. How does this bug get out there and there doesnt seem to be anything we can do to rectify it maybe short of a factory reset. If the bug is in the update then surely even after full reset it will still be there?

 

[Mickgee]

Thanks, SHJ2017

I'll give your suggested fix a go next time I get the keyboard error. Fortunately I have not had the error come up in the last few days.

Mickgee

 

[Mickgee]

Hi Fuzzyducky,

My theory is that this is probably down to sloppy coding somewhere along the line. There is always a margin of error with these things and errors like this get through but that isn't actually much comfort when you can't get into your phone or even use the phone because the keyboard doesn't work. If they don't fix it then I reckon that it will be there in all future updates. I am not certain how you flag this sort of thing. I might get onto Samsung and see what they suggest. As you say very frustrating.

Michgee

 

[Chad Akpabio-Wilson]

As Mick sais, its definitely Emoji driven. Without using them the keyboard works absolutely fine as Swiftkey but as soon as you try and select an emoji the default keyboard switches to the Samsung default keyboard and then stops working. Also as Mick sais the advice has been to delete or uninstall the Samsung keyboard app but it is nowhere to be found in the apps list so cant do that. Somewhat frustrating. How does this bug get out there and there doesnt seem to be anything we can do to rectify it maybe short of a factory reset. If the bug is in the update then surely even after full reset it will still be there?

Fuzzy: I have a note 5 international version, and my keyboard just gave me this error message today, after receiving an update a few days ago.

First, you should be able to find "Samsung keyboard" when you select SHOW SYSTEM APPS under the menu toggle of the app manager area.

I then did force stop,and restarted my phone... The problem persisted. I came to this site for help, wanted to respond to your post, and in trying to register to do so all of a sudden my keyboard was back online... Well actually, it reverted to Samsung keyboard with all the settings set to basic (no predictive TX etc).

I'm not even sure how I solved the problem, but now I am up and running with SwiftKey again, albeit, my machine is running super slow... Again, perhaps this last update is the culprit.

I hope this helps. By the way, I did force stop because the cache button was grayed out and already at 0. It is now available to press, and I think I may just for good measure. Or on second thought, I should probably quite while I'm ahead.

Cheers!
Chad

 

[gl14]

Replace "Swiftkey" with "Swype" and my experience exactly mirrors Mickgee. Emojis in Messages for me is unusable now due to this bug.

I reported the bug to Samsung here. Maybe if others do the same it'll get more attention.

 

[the8thdave]

Hi

I had this same problem just as you have described, tried the online fixes and nothing worked.

I went into Settings, Apps, Reset App Preferences and this seems to have fixed the problem.

Is a pain having to put your apps back to how you had them but it does seem to have stopped getting the error message.

Hope that helps.

 

[gl14]

Thanks. Tried it, but it didn't work.

 

[smrdroid]

I have the same problem with my Note 5 - it is clearly related to the recent Verizon security update!
And, worse, I ran a factory reset this weekend, which fixed it for just 48 hours - now back again!
Same error message and no keyboard!
Very frustrating.

 

[TheMrBerryhill]

Hi, I'm getting desperate and I would be really grateful for some help. I have a Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge and today received a prompt to update the system software (Android 7.0 installed) which I duly did and all seemed to work fine afterwards. I tried to send a text a few hours later and found I kept on getting an error message which said ' Samsung Keyboard has stopped'. I couldn't input into the phone at all and worse still the screen lock was in use and so I couldn't input the password to release it. Fortunately I had a Samsung account and managed to unlock the phone remotely but the device is virtually unusable because I can't type into it.

I had a look at the keyboards available on the phone. I have Swiftkey loaded and enabled as well as Google Voice to Text. The Samsung keyboard is there but is greyed out. I am unable to use the Swiftkey keyboard because the ' Samsung Keyboard has stopped' error message keeps coming up and the SwiftKey keyboard won’t work. Google Voice to Text seems to be working OK. It all seems one very big coincidence that I had updated the phone earlier today and now this has happened. I have never had a problem with the phone up until now.

I thought of doing a factory reset as a last resort and although this is a pain in the rear end, it is not the end of the world as I have most of my data and settings backed up on either Samsung or Google but I can't even seem to do that. If you go through the various menus on the phone to do a factory reset you get asked for a password and I can't type the password in even though I know what it is.

I saw on the forums some instructions about powering the phone down and then depressing the power on button half way up on the right hand edge on the phone at the same time as depressing the + and - volume buttons towards the top left hand edge of the screen. It then said to release the buttons as soon as the 'Samsung' logo appeared and that this would show an Android menu. This didn't happen for me and the phone just went to its standard screen. I guess I must have done something wrong but I don't know what.

I even thought of trying to reinstall the update that I installed this morning but doing this for an Android phone is a completely different thing for me than doing the same thing for (say) a faulty app on a Windows laptop.

I really like the phone and don't want to have to buy a replacement but I am rapidly beginning to think that this is the only way forward. However I don't want to have to pay out that sort of money.

If anyone out there can help me then I would be eternally grateful. I can't believe that I am the only one experiencing this following this recent software update. I can’t help thinking that the update has corrupted in some way but whatever the end result is I can’t type into the phone. Thanks in anticipation.

Mickgee

I am having this issue with all of our S8+ devices and with the Tab S3 Pro that's not even a week old. Is this a SwiftKey, Samsung, or Knox issue?

 

[gl14]

I've been in dialogue with Samsung tech support, and tried 3 things, including safe mode. However, none worked and the bug is reproducible even in safe mode. They strongly suggested factory reset, which I'm hesitant to do since it's a pain, but I may try it.

I requested that they escalate this to their developers, but they replied that "our observation is that it isn't a common issue in all of the updated phones. All of the issues related to Software will be eliminated by performing the factory reset, so we recommend you to perform it. "

So, if I decide to do it, I'll let you know the results.

 

[gl14]

TheMrBerryhill: It's not SwiftKey per se, since I'm having the same problem with Swype on an S6.

 

[gl14]

Mickgee: I can get rid of the error by going to Settings -> General management -> language and input -> default keyboard, and then selecting the non-Samsung keyboard. Then, as long as I don't bring up emojis again, I can use Swype (my non-samsung keyboard) without any problems.

Does that work for you?

 

[MtheInsomniac]

Mickgee: I can get rid of the error by going to Settings -> General management -> language and input -> default keyboard, and then selecting the non-Samsung keyboard. Then, as long as I don't bring up emojis again, I can use Swype (my non-samsung keyboard) without any problems.

Does that work for you?

I have this exact problem, found this same fix, & have tested with Swype & Fleksy. Do you also see two instances of Samsung Keyboard in Default Keyboard before resetting?

As this problem is recurrent, reproducible with any 3rd Party keyboard, & affecting at least a dozen people, do I need to call Samsung & link them to this board?

 

[gl14]

MtheInsomniac: Couldn't hurt for another person to do so, but I did exactly that (including linking to this thread) and their response was that "our observation is that it isn't a common issue in all of the updated phones." More complaints could move them, though.

Also, don't see two instances in Default Keyboard settings: I only see one instance each of Swype and Samsung Keyboard.

 

[Makakou]

I have a quick workaround, you need to go to settings, apps, then look for Dictionary app and deactivate it. If the problem occurs again, just do the same.