I’m brand new to Compose and working on a simple Kotlin app to learn; so far I like the paradigm but I definitely don’t know what I don’t know. One of the Activities in the app displays a LazyColumn of string pairs; they are initially displayed as passive Text objects but clicking on one changes both strings in the pair into editable TextFields. I’ve got the multiple-item selection, Save Changes/Cancel, etc. behavior working the way I want it to, but it’s annoying me that the user has to tap twice to actually start editing: once on the Text object to replace it with an (unfocused) TextField, and then again on the TextField to actually shift the input focus there. It would be great if the default focus logic recognized when a new TextField enters the visible portion of the composition and automatically shifted the focus there, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. I tried to manually implement that behavior via FocusRequesters, but even though I seem to be calling requestFocus() on the right requester after field composition, it doesn’t seem to do anything— I still have to tap twice to activate the TextField.

This is what I’m using to build the Modifier for the TextFields (the first boolean parameter is to ensure that at most one TextField gets a manual focus request per recomposition):

@Composable
fun maybeFocus(needsFocus: Boolean,
               alreadyFocused: MutableState<Boolean>,
               modifier: Modifier = Modifier,
               label: String = "*unlabeled*"): Modifier {
    val keyboardController = LocalSoftwareKeyboardController.current
    val focusRequester = remember { FocusRequester() }

    return if (!needsFocus)
        modifier
    else
    // H/T Raymond Arteaga at /questions/64181930/request-focus-on-textfield-in-jetpack-compose
        modifier.focusRequester(focusRequester)
            .onFocusChanged {
                if (!it.isFocused)
                    keyboardController?.hide()
                else
                    keyboardController?.show()
                println("*** onFocusChanged() event for $label with focus state ${it.isFocused}")
            }
            .onGloballyPositioned {
                if (!alreadyFocused.value) {
                    println("*** onGloballyPositioned() shifting focus to $label")
                    keyboardController?.show()
                    focusRequester.requestFocus()
                    alreadyFocused.value = true  // stop cyclic recompositions
                }
            }
            .semantics { liveRegion = LiveRegionMode.Assertive }
            .focusable()
}

In execution, I’m seeing traces like this in Logcat:

---------------------------- PROCESS ENDED (27111) for package com.example.focustest ----------------------------
---------------------------- PROCESS STARTED (27180) for package com.example.focustest ----------------------------
2024-12-29 21:07:26.326 27180-27180 ziparchive              com.example.focustest                W  Unable to open '/data/data/com.example.focustest/code_cache/.overlay/base.apk/classes3.dm': No such file or directory
2024-12-29 21:07:26.327 27180-27180 ziparchive              com.example.focustest                W  Unable to open '/data/app/~~QxC-oaJbN5EyyVC5w0qnmw==/com.example.focustest-PlGuk9JyBYhGvA3ghkyerw==/base.dm': No such file or directory
2024-12-29 21:07:26.327 27180-27180 ziparchive              com.example.focustest                W  Unable to open '/data/app/~~QxC-oaJbN5EyyVC5w0qnmw==/com.example.focustest-PlGuk9JyBYhGvA3ghkyerw==/base.dm': No such file or directory
2024-12-29 21:07:26.537 27180-27180 nativeloader            com.example.focustest                D  Configuring clns-7 for other apk /data/app/~~QxC-oaJbN5EyyVC5w0qnmw==/com.example.focustest-PlGuk9JyBYhGvA3ghkyerw==/base.apk. target_sdk_version=34, uses_libraries=, library_path=/data/app/~~QxC-oaJbN5EyyVC5w0qnmw==/com.example.focustest-PlGuk9JyBYhGvA3ghkyerw==/lib/x86_64, permitted_path=/data:/mnt/expand:/data/user/0/com.example.focustest
2024-12-29 21:07:26.551 27180-27180 GraphicsEnvironment     com.example.focustest                V  Currently set values for:
2024-12-29 21:07:26.551 27180-27180 GraphicsEnvironment     com.example.focustest                V    angle_gl_driver_selection_pkgs=[]
2024-12-29 21:07:26.551 27180-27180 GraphicsEnvironment     com.example.focustest                V    angle_gl_driver_selection_values=[]
2024-12-29 21:07:26.551 27180-27180 GraphicsEnvironment     com.example.focustest                V  Global.Settings values are invalid: number of packages: 0, number of values: 0
2024-12-29 21:07:26.552 27180-27180 GraphicsEnvironment     com.example.focustest                V  Neither updatable production driver nor prerelease driver is supported.
2024-12-29 21:07:26.713 27180-27180 HWUI                    com.example.focustest                W  Unknown dataspace 0
2024-12-29 21:07:26.956 27180-27180 ample.focustest         com.example.focustest                W  Method boolean androidx.compose.runtime.snapshots.SnapshotStateList.conditionalUpdate(boolean, kotlin.jvm.functions.Function1) failed lock verification and will run slower.
                                                                                                    Common causes for lock verification issues are non-optimized dex code
                                                                                                    and incorrect proguard optimizations.
2024-12-29 21:07:26.956 27180-27180 ample.focustest         com.example.focustest                W  Method boolean androidx.compose.runtime.snapshots.SnapshotStateList.conditionalUpdate$default(androidx.compose.runtime.snapshots.SnapshotStateList, boolean, kotlin.jvm.functions.Function1, int, java.lang.Object) failed lock verification and will run slower.
2024-12-29 21:07:26.956 27180-27180 ample.focustest         com.example.focustest                W  Method java.lang.Object androidx.compose.runtime.snapshots.SnapshotStateList.mutate(kotlin.jvm.functions.Function1) failed lock verification and will run slower.
2024-12-29 21:07:26.957 27180-27180 ample.focustest         com.example.focustest                W  Method void androidx.compose.runtime.snapshots.SnapshotStateList.update(boolean, kotlin.jvm.functions.Function1) failed lock verification and will run slower.
2024-12-29 21:07:26.957 27180-27180 ample.focustest         com.example.focustest                W  Method void androidx.compose.runtime.snapshots.SnapshotStateList.update$default(androidx.compose.runtime.snapshots.SnapshotStateList, boolean, kotlin.jvm.functions.Function1, int, java.lang.Object) failed lock verification and will run slower.
2024-12-29 21:07:26.997 27180-27185 ample.focustest         com.example.focustest                I  Compiler allocated 5174KB to compile void android.view.ViewRootImpl.performTraversals()
2024-12-29 21:07:27.247 27180-27196 EGL_emulation           com.example.focustest                I  Opening libGLESv1_CM_emulation.so
2024-12-29 21:07:27.248 27180-27196 EGL_emulation           com.example.focustest                I  Opening libGLESv2_emulation.so
2024-12-29 21:07:27.266 27180-27196 HWUI                    com.example.focustest                W  Failed to choose config with EGL_SWAP_BEHAVIOR_PRESERVED, retrying without...
2024-12-29 21:07:27.267 27180-27196 HWUI                    com.example.focustest                W  Failed to initialize 101010-2 format, error = EGL_SUCCESS
2024-12-29 21:07:27.315 27180-27196 Gralloc4                com.example.focustest                I  mapper 4.x is not supported
2024-12-29 21:07:27.414 27180-27180 Choreographer           com.example.focustest                I  Skipped 36 frames!  The application may be doing too much work on its main thread.
2024-12-29 21:07:32.423 27180-27207 ProfileInstaller        com.example.focustest                D  Installing profile for com.example.focustest
2024-12-29 21:07:37.715 27180-27180 System.out              com.example.focustest                I  *** Requesting focus shift to 0
2024-12-29 21:07:37.741 27180-27180 System.out              com.example.focustest                I  *** Drawing focused item at 0
2024-12-29 21:07:37.750 27180-27196 EGL_emulation           com.example.focustest                D  app_time_stats: avg=3445.11ms min=11.40ms max=10024.35ms count=3
2024-12-29 21:07:37.851 27180-27180 CompatChangeReporter    com.example.focustest                D  Compat change id reported: 289878283; UID 10210; state: ENABLED
2024-12-29 21:07:37.927 27180-27180 System.out              com.example.focustest                I  *** onFocusChanged() event for 0 with focus state false
2024-12-29 21:07:37.976 27180-27180 System.out              com.example.focustest                I  *** onGloballyPositioned() shifting focus to 0
2024-12-29 21:07:37.979 27180-27180 Compose Focus           com.example.focustest                D  Owner FocusChanged(true)
2024-12-29 21:07:37.981 27180-27180 System.out              com.example.focustest                I  *** onFocusChanged() event for 0 with focus state true
2024-12-29 21:07:38.018 27180-27180 InsetsController        com.example.focustest                D  hide(ime(), fromIme=false)
2024-12-29 21:07:38.021 27180-27180 ImeTracker              com.example.focustest                I  com.example.focustest:8be08fc2: onRequestHide at ORIGIN_CLIENT reason HIDE_SOFT_INPUT_BY_INSETS_API fromUser false
2024-12-29 21:07:38.021 27180-27180 ImeTracker              com.example.focustest                I  com.example.focustest:8be08fc2: onCancelled at PHASE_CLIENT_APPLY_ANIMATION
2024-12-29 21:07:38.757 27180-27196 EGL_emulation           com.example.focustest                D  app_time_stats: avg=18.43ms min=5.17ms max=37.50ms count=48
2024-12-29 21:07:43.543 27180-27196 EGL_emulation           com.example.focustest                D  app_time_stats: avg=950.36ms min=5.83ms max=4672.76ms count=5
2024-12-29 21:07:43.617 27180-27180 System.out              com.example.focustest                

The jank/framerate issues are because I’m intentionally not trying to get too fancy with parallel threads and coroutines in this stripped-down test case; the part I’m concerned about are the focus-related events. This portion represents me clicking on the first item in the list (label “0”) and is more or less as expected; the first onFocusChanged() event is presumably triggered when the TextField is created or sized, before the requestFocus() event, which is delayed until the onGloballyPositioned() trigger.

I  *** Requesting focus shift to 0
I  *** Drawing focused item at 0
I  *** onFocusChanged() event for 0 with focus state false
I  *** onGloballyPositioned() shifting focus to 0
I  *** onFocusChanged() event for 0 with focus state true

However, even though that second onFocusChanged() event (with parameter it.isFocused == true) is coming through on the first tap (as expected), I still have to tap a second time to actually get an input cursor and on-screen keyboard for the newly created TextField.

Is there something I’m missing about the FocusRequester API? Is there possibly some other element in the composition “stealing” the focus from these TextFields (even though nothing else even has a manual FocusRequester attached), and if so how can I identify and suppress it? Is something else about my app design interfering with the way FocusRequesters are supposed to work? Of note, the LazyColumn in question is normally built within a Scaffold, but after I read in some other StackOverflow answers that Scaffolds can complicate the use of FocusRequester, I commented out the Scaffold and still got essentially the same trace as shown above.