Comment 46 for bug 1366421

OK, bug #1648543 delayed things a bit, but I think I'm done done now. There is a new D-Bus property AutoShowPaused, that when set to true, unconditionally blocks auto-show. 'TabletMode' seemed too fuzzy for the very specific purpose here, so I dropped it in favor of the original name in #2.

If you can, please test the new settings in Preferences->Auto-show, tabs Convertible devices and/or external Keyboards.

@Francesco, whenever you find the time, please create a new snapshot of rev. 2207. Thanks in advance.

'Convertible devices', aka Tablet-mode detection, is enabled by default and covers points 1) to 3) of post #43.
Ritesh, you may need to enter hotkey values 70 and 71 into the entries. There's no need for acpid in that case. Other systems with working SW_TABLET_MODE switch don't need any configuration but require running acpid. Supported devices should hide the keyboard and stop auto-show when leaving tablet-mode, and resume auto-show when entering tablet-mode.

The 'External keyboards' tab is perhaps less relevant for this bug report, but I'm still interested if it works for you. In particular, does the list show more or less correctly detected keyboard devices? Are there any duplicate entries? As a heads-up, some mice will report as keyboards. I haven't found a way to filter them out, but you should be able to ignore them by setting the checkmark.
The idea is: plug an external keyboard in -> Onboard keyboard should disappear and auto-show gets disabled. Remove external keyboard -> auto-show resumes.