Android Feature request: Add an ability to start / pause / stop recording via intents

[pvagner]

Hello,

First huge compliments for the android app being so simple and lightweight. Since you are using standard android UI elements almost every where and clearly labelling them the android app is very nice to use with screen reading apps blind and other visually disabled people are using for accessing their android devices.

By nature screen reader apps have a lot of powers e.g. to process gestures and intercept button presses.
3rd party screen reading apps even allow assigning their own actions to the gestures and button presses similar to the keymapper app.

If there was a recording app we could send simple intents that take no arguments for start recording, pause recording and stop recording we would get a feature so we can start recording from almost anywhere. I imagine if I quickly want to record something I can just unlock the screen, perform the assigned gesture and boom, phiola starts recording.

I've also considered using multimedia keys for this however phiola allows recording and playing at the same time and there might be a confusion what the pause / stop multimedia keys do when both recording and playback is started.

Would you please kindly consider such a featture request?

[stsaz]

Hi!
I'm glad to hear phiola is useful to someone.

If there was a recording app we could send simple intents that take no arguments for start recording, pause recording and stop recording

We'll handle 'start recording' request by addressing #110 , but is there any standard way to pause or stop recording?

I've also considered using multimedia keys

That's actually an interesting idea. We can add a new setting for that (e.g. Headset MM keys control the recording track) -- phiola will handle MM keys not for playback tracks but for the recording track. What do you think?

[pvagner]

We'll handle 'start recording' request by addressing #110 , but is there any standard way to pause or stop recording?

I don't know if there is actually a standard way.

I was thinking you might add your own seperate documented intents and then reuse the start recording feature for #110 . That way all the use cases would be covered. For example when sending intent with record sound action from automation apps such as keymapper or macrodroid to phiola there would be nothing to handle the returned uri through the document provider.

We can add a new setting for that (e.g. Headset MM keys control the recording track) -- phiola will handle MM keys not for playback tracks but for the recording track. What do you think?

There is also record multimedia key but very few keyboards do have it.

The issue with this approach is that the app should be running all the time for handling multimedia keys to work. And since I'd like to start recording from anywhere including the lock screen this may not be enough.

If you don't want to spend too much time dealing with this perhaps you can make a compromise.

• Implement intent handling record sound action as requested in Android Feature Request: add an intent handling android.provider.MediaStore.RECORD_SOUND action #110
• Add an option that multimedia keys will control recording rather than playback when recording has been started with a different action such as record sound action or a record button on the main screen.

But with this alternative approach we won't be easily able to start recording from other 3rd party apps that are not expecting the the uri to the resulting recording.

[stsaz]

I was thinking you might add your own seperate documented intents

Oh, I see. Yes, I think that's possible.

The issue with this approach is that the app should be running all the time for handling multimedia keys to work. And since I'd like to start recording from anywhere including the lock screen this may not be enough.

You're right, after phiola process has been stopped, the system won't start it automatically on MM key press. Anyway, that was a nice idea :)

[pvagner]

Hello @stsaz

I have looked at android docs again, consulted this with a few friends who might benefit from this feature and I'm thinking about more opportunities to get the recording started from just anywhere.

Initially I have suggested adding custom intents. However it's possible to export more intents so the app will be listed in the launcher with multiple items. So we might get Phiola icon in the launcher we are using now and two additional icons exported to the launcher such as Phiola Instant Record and Phiola Instant Stop and that will launch Phiola and either start or stop recording. Ordinary users can just place these icons wherever they wish and power users will get an ability to inwoke the phiola actions from their favorite automation app.

Or a different suggestion:

By default android has a feature to launch a camera app when double pressing the power button.

Camera apps do it by implementing this intent action https://developer.android.com/reference/android/provider/MediaStore#INTENT_ACTION_STILL_IMAGE_CAMERA
And this one from the lock screen: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/provider/MediaStore#INTENT_ACTION_STILL_IMAGE_CAMERA_SECURE

I've looked at graphene os camera app and there is some activity alias that should help with this double tap feature.

I understand for majority of users this is not usefull as they would like to preserve their camera shortcuts but for me and other blind people pretending to be a camera app might actually be a solution to our problem how to quickly start recording.

I know you are thinking in a similar way than me that you are fine doing effective and usefull things rather than doing what everyone else does.

I am not able to implement this my-self so I am just posting this as a suggestion if you will like this better rather than adding your own custom intent for start / stop recording.

It would be a great bonus if you can consider implementing this as a toggle. When recording has been started calling this action will stop it, calling this action when recording is not running might just start it.

Issuing a different vibration pattern depending if recording has been started or if it has just been stopped would make this absolute winner.

Please do you like some of these ideas and can you considerall or some of them for the future?

Greetings

Peter

[stsaz]

Hi!
Thanks for the suggestions!
In general, I don't mind including into phiola any features someone may find useful, because phiola's architecture is very flexible.
But for Android version it gets slightly more complicated:

• Android apps can not be as dynamic as desktop apps, much stuff has to be hardcoded during the building process rather than dynamically load some library and, viola, you get access to new features
• needs more effort (UI + Java + JNI + C instead of just C as for CLI)
• my skills in Android are not good (obviously phiola falls behind compared to popular apps in usability or how it looks)
• some features may require additional system permissions -- I think it's very critical for phiola to keep its permission list as small as possible

I'll need to research if I can add new phiola icons/commands to Launcher. Although I like this idea, I'm not sure it can be done dynamically (from phiola Settings), because I guess most users will get angry with phiola suddenly occupies 3 slots in Launcher instead of 1 :).

Also, there is a feature in Android -- Widgets. Perhaps this is more correct approach to do it: users put the 'recording' widget onto their desktop screen and press start/stop recording from there.

About camera intent commands -- also need to research, it may require additional permissions, because otherwise any app can silently override the default behavior (?).