Android app cover actions

asked 2015-02-01 22:28:46 +0300

attah gravatar image

updated 2015-04-23 12:44:57 +0300

The idea of having cover actions for android apps keeps popping up in my head. So i decided to poke around a bit and see if it might be possible. It seems that android apps accept events, called intents, and those are afaik published in the manifest for each app.

So i suggest that android apps get options to add right and left cover actions via the settings menu, and the user can choose from any of the published intents. Possibly the default icon set might be enough choice for identification.. but in the grand scheme of things i think icons are a secondary issue.

However, i can't figure out how to trigger intents from the outside. I bet the jolla crew might have more success. Found a good post on the subject, but they got pretty much as far as i did. See: https://together.jolla.com/question/38863/how-do-i-trigger-an-android-intent-from-outside-alien-dalvik/

UPDATE: I forgot to add that I figured out how to trigger intents from the outside, see the linked question or https://github.com/attah/alien-tools (Note: outdated since alien dalvik moved to a chroot) and this awesome stuff by CODeRUS https://github.com/CODeRUS/aliendalvik-control

What do you think? :)

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Comments

1

Good Idea! What about a standard action per default as a start, like beeing able to "pause and resume" the whole apps process? As of now, Android apps are paused when pushed to background afaik. Would be nice to be able to start them again and continue running within their cover app representation.

mosen ( 2015-02-01 22:49:35 +0300 )edit
1

@mosen: If it's possible, I'm all for it. :) But i don't think it's a good default for all apps, there are only a few that would be useful to have running without the possibility of input. Games need input, media players run in the background.. Really it's just youtube i can think of. But none the less, if it can be done.. it's all good.

attah ( 2015-02-01 22:57:26 +0300 )edit

i was just coming from the "doability" side ;) Somehow dalvik apps are paused and continued already, so i thought it would be a nice first step to leave this decision to the user. A configurable solution needs much more time to implement and as we learned from app-folders, there will be half finished steps befor we get a final solution... Senswise. yes there would be youtube, xialive and many other mediaplayer, i can thhink of some games that just need few interaction, i use a crm client that would continue to update without bringing it to front, And thinking further, it ties into general Dalvik multitasking question here: https://together.jolla.com/question/64186/feature-request-true-android-apps-multitasking/

mosen ( 2015-02-01 23:29:07 +0300 )edit