Hello,
I seem to not be able to figure out how to use the keyboard for search. The searches I am doing are inside of addons so that might be related to the issue.
What is happening is when i get to a search and bring up the keyboard on the app, I type into the keyboard and it appears on the phone screen, but none of the characters make it to kodi. To do the search i need to either use the android Remote or use the remote function on the app and select the characters that are on the screen using the arrows. Is ther something additional i need to setup for this to work? Does typing on the keyboard work in different areas inside of kodi?
Well you lack lot of details 
If the text appear on the phone and you have a dialog box showing? In that case you need to press OK to send the message.
If you press the keyboard button to have a keyboard shown and nothing is shown on Kodi on click then I guess you are on Kodi 18 and most of the builds since December are broken.
I am hitting okay to try and submit the text, but that only makes the dialog on the screen go away, and does not perform a search. I will try and document my process more when I get home so that I can give you more information.
Addons in particular where i am seeing this issue is Exodus and Neptune Rising.
When this issue appears it is when I am at the home screen of Kodi or watching local media or media in the addon, and I go on the Yatse App and click the Addons Menu>Select an Addon and navigate (on the phone) to the search functionality>The search dialog will pop up on the TV Screen and the keyboard will pop up on the Yatse App. I will type in my search term, and then when I hit okay the search term will appear on the search dialog on the screen for a moment, but then will close. the Yatse App will just show 'Empty directory / Playlist.
If I am already in the menu of the addon and do the same steps the search works fine.
I might be the addons or something that are causing the issue. Is it possible to have the results show up inside of Yatse?
Ok so not related to Keyboard at all
Yes it’s the addons that does not correctly handle search via VFS. Nothing I can do on Yatse side as there’s no other API to talk to addons 
Logs can confirm.