SoftKeys provides on screen keys for menu/home/back/search for devices that don't have those keys in hardware.
SoftKeys is also available in the Android Market
If you want to make themes for SoftKeys you will need the tools to build apks (eclipse/android sdk/etc) and the template from the git repository.
http://git.hoopajoo.net
Changelog:
2011/01/11 - 3.06 - Fix notification keys, boot straight to launcher on system startup
2011/01/11 - 3.05 - Fix notification softkeys <b>broken release</b>
2011/01/10 - 3.04 - Adds dpad and up to 6 custom keys, ability to put device
to sleep, improved performance for key injection, built in documentation, bugfixes
2010/12/23 - 3.00 - Most of the layout code has been rewritten to allow for theming, couple of bug fixes, SoftKeys is now gpl3
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Old Changelog (I'm too lazy to reorder this newest to oldest):
2010/12/04 - 1.01 - added launcher selector and remembers last launcher
2010/12/04 - 1.02 - added themes layouts from nemith, looks more like his screenshots but the spinner text is still black so the launcher chooser is hard to read, hopefully I'll have some time to fiddle with that soon
2010/12/04 - 1.03 - My fingers are too fat, I made everything in to image buttons and moved the launcher config to a prefs screen, if anyone has nicer icons let me know these are repurposed from generic android icons
2010/12/05 - 1.04 - Added alternate long-press soft home key for secondary launcher like if you want to use the built-in nook home, added configurable options for what to do if you tap or double tap the nook button while in the softkeys screen, long press on menu/back sends an extra back to the app before sending the requested button for apps that bring up pause screens or something when you move them to the background (angry birds, etc)
2010/12/05 - 1.05 - Integrated the dark theme from nemith, you can choose it in prefs now. Added options to disable the "exit" and "configure" buttons. If you disable "configure" you can still get to the preferences using the "menu" button in the notification bar (e.g. the normal menu button)
2010/12/05 - 1.06 - fix broken key handling, menu and back didn't work, don't use 1.05
2010/12/06 - 1.07 - add recent applications to top of the screen since we don't have a long-press-home recent apps dialog, looking in to re-ordering the buttons next
2010/12/07 - 1.08 - This release adds options to re-order the softkeys, insert soft keys in to the notification area, disable the recent apps list, long press the background to configure if you lost the configure button, and some options for changing the background to dim/blurred/none (note: the notification soft keys show up in the notification area, not in the main status bar like the nook menu/back, I can't put things there as an application you would need to modify system jars to get this effect)
2010/12/07 - v1.09 - Default to non-blurred background and added note about slowness, added option to return to softkeys after pressing back button
2010/12/08 - v1.10 - Selecting "SoftKeys" for your single-press home action will make it so if you launch softkeys, it will go to the launcher unless you hit home again, e.g. single-press home to go to launcher anywhere, double-press home to go to softkeys
2010/12/13 - v2.00 - This adds a new service overlay that is displayed above all apps allowing softkeys to be sent without having to mess with the home button. Default home key behavior has changed to be single click home from anywhere goes to your default launcher, double click home to get to the old softkeys interface. I'm still fiddling with service panel layouts and ideas so things will probably change, I just wanted to get some testing with something simple.
2010/12/17 - v2.01 - The service panel can now be dragged around the screen, you can change it from horizontal to vertial by long pressing it, you can adjust the transparency of the panel and the icon size, and also control if it closes after sending key events. If you don't want the dialog background on the panel you can disable it to just have floating buttons. NOTE: the signing certificate has changed to a release cert, you will need to uninstall the old softkeys before installing this one
2010/12/17 - v2.02 - Now you can move the button that brings up softkeys service, slightly better handling for switching horizontal/vertical layout by long press
veeerrry nice man!
Thanks! I agree with you - I didn't want to permanently re-assign the volume buttons, as I use them in some apps.
One request, if possible ) - Is there any way to make it go to launcher pro (or whatever you want as default) when pressing "Home" in the app? Right now, it asks me to "Pick Home" every time.
ddenson said:
Thanks! I agree with you - I didn't want to permanently re-assign the volume buttons, as I use them in some apps.
One request, if possible ) - Is there any way to make it go to launcher pro (or whatever you want as default) when pressing "Home" in the app? Right now, it asks me to "Pick Home" every time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I never personally use the "home" button, I use the quick drawer thing in the notification bar, so I don't really use a launcher. I could probably quickly add a button just for an alternate home or use last home I guess/choose new home I guess. I'll see what I can do. I've also though about adding arrow soft keys, for using in like connectbot, is there any interest in that?
There are also other minor irritating things, like apps that exit when they are not in focus will not work with this hack. For example, monkey kick (a game my son loves to play) will exit if it's not in focus so it never receives the soft keys. I suppose it doesn't matter though since it doesn't use the screen completely anyway, so he just gets to play on my old g1
bpk said:
I never personally use the "home" button, I use the quick drawer thing in the notification bar, so I don't really use a launcher. I could probably quickly add a button just for an alternate home or use last home I guess/choose new home I guess. I'll see what I can do. I've also though about adding arrow soft keys, for using in like connectbot, is there any interest in that?
There are also other minor irritating things, like apps that exit when they are not in focus will not work with this hack. For example, monkey kick (a game my son loves to play) will exit if it's not in focus so it never receives the soft keys. I suppose it doesn't matter though since it doesn't use the screen completely anyway, so he just gets to play on my old g1
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks again. Using the last home would be great, if that's possible. I don't personally have any use for additional buttons, but maybe someone else can comment? Rgds.
Awesome.
Code would be cool it would be nice to have them popup at the bottom of the screen like when you press the menu button in an app.
Also to take a screen shot you hold the 'n' button and tap the Vol - button. If you have as much trouble as I did with this method, you can also install drocap2 (root required) which does nice job.
awesome app. its perfect! great replacement until someone does the sidebar buttons like the ones available for the archos
nice work... now if you can make this pop up on the bottom of the screen with a black background like the archos tablets it would be awesome...
thank you, this is a great work around
I put the source up at
http: // git.hoopajoo.net
(take out the spaces I can't post links apparently)
That page has a list of my public git urls available, the last one is SoftKeys
if anyone wants to check it out, I'm currently looking at remembering the last launcher picked and defaulting to that for people that use launchers.
-- the rest of this is just for people looking in to the source, to provide some background to why I did it this way and alternate ideas I had --
If any devs look at it I thought I'd post some of my reasons for doing it this way:
1) I looked at creating a custom init service bound to a keycode at first, this would have made it so you didn't need superuser but would have required modifying your ramdisk. Even just making a daemon and communicating through some kind of pipe would require modifying the ramdisk to get it in init. In the end I abandoned the idea because it seemed easier for most normal people to just install an apk.
2) I looked at binding this to the camera button and remapping it in the keylayout, that would preserve the default home screen selections, but would require modifying a file in your /system/ so people would need to adb their stuff. Again I thought an apk would be easier and adding in shell commands would just complicate things for people and I'm not very good at support
3) I spent a LOT of time looking through git repos from aosp to find out if there was some way to bind to the long-press home and take over the recent apps list, since it doesn't even work. This would preserve your home settings and not even remove an existing function. After several hours grepping through the core.git stuff I decided this was just easier to do. If figured good enough is usually good enough. Though if someone can figure this out it would be sweet.
4) I really was hoping that we could just pull whatever archos is doing since that seems ideal, completely soft buttons. However after downloading the aos firmware I found it was encrypted and apparently currently can only be decrypted by the devices using the public key stored on them somewhere and I'm not aware of anyone having dumped their system images yet.
Also I've been looking through the superuser source to see how they handle the popups, they do a good job of not killing the running app and being all around unobtrusive, doing it their way for the popup buttons would be really sweet since it never seems to break the currently running app.
Great except one thing!
I have LauncherPro so when I click the home button, it always gives me a choice between LauncherPro and the original home. Can you make it so I can set a default? I want to just go straight to launcher pro then I select home.
Pinesal said:
Great except one thing!
I have LauncherPro so when I click the home button, it always gives me a choice between LauncherPro and the original home. Can you make it so I can set a default? I want to just go straight to launcher pro then I select home.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The thread is one page long and your question was already discussed.
One page was too much reading?
How about double click home button for menu and hold the button for back? Just my 2 cents.
I have taken the source code and modified it to a be a row across the bottom of the screen, I think this looks a little bit better
Note the bar at the bottom of both. Ignore that ghosting on the second image.
If anyone is good at graphics I can use some images to create a fancier looking bottom bar.
kabi said:
How about double click home button for menu and hold the button for back? Just my 2 cents.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am going to play to play with doing stuff like this. For example. Press Home for the menu. Press Home again to make the meny disappear. Double tap home for menu. Long Press for back.
I think next on my plate is setting a default launcher application to use when you hit the soft Home button.
Here is the github respository for anyone interested: https://github.com/bennetb01/SoftKeys
I can't get this to install. The first one instaled fine but when I kick this off it says it will replace the first version then "application not installed" should I remove the first one manually?
Great work BTW. Thanks
lovelacer said:
I can't get this to install. The first one instaled fine but when I kick this off it says it will replace the first version then "application not installed" should I remove the first one manually?
Great work BTW. Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can uninstall the first one via the following:
Code:
adb uninstall net.hoopajoo.android.SoftKeys
Install the second one normally via:
Code:
adb install SoftKeys.apk
Interestingly enough the adb uninstall command resulted in a failure as well. I just uninstalled via long press at my app screen and was able to install via root explorer on the nook.
Thanks for the help though.
I do like those buttons, I'm not much for making things look nice, typically I just do back end stuff. If you want to rebase against head and post your git repo I'll merge those changes in to main.
I started using launcher pro and realized it does suck way too much to have to select your launcher every time. It's just 1 button press but I'm too lazy.
And for people re-installing, from adb you have to do:
adb install -r <APK>
Also to remove packages I use appremover, or you can use astro file manager with the package manager under the menu.
nemith said:
I have taken the source code and modified it to a be a row across the bottom of the screen, I think this looks a little bit better
Note the bar at the bottom of both. Ignore that ghosting on the second image.
If anyone is good at graphics I can use some images to create a fancier looking bottom bar.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks very much for this, sir.
About those images: what size do ya need? i can do them right now.
-K
I didn't want to start a new thread for this piece of information, so this looks like a good place to discuss it. My wife noticed that you can always access the back button by swiping from right to left across the notification toolbar. This worked on her non-root NC as well as my rooted one. Pretty cool!
After installing VEGAn gingerbread on my brand new gTablet, when I press my gTablet home button I get the clock app, not the home screen. It also boots into the clock app, not the lock screen. Help!
I have seen other mentions of this in the xda forums, but no solution. Anyone have any help?
Thanks!
New information. I reset everything and started over. This time I installed another clock before rebooting the first time. Now, after I reboot and swipe the lock screen open, I am asked how to complete that action, using Clock or Alarm Clock Plus.
If I use the back arrow to get out of that, the Home button takes me to the Home screen for that session. If I reboot, then I get the "how to complete this, Clock/Alarm Clock Plus" option again the first time.
So, it seems that it wants to launch a clock. How do I stop it from wanting to launch the clock then?
Thank you!
This seems to be an existing problem, which has been discussed here, but I don't see a solution.
It is mentioned a bunch of times in this long thread for the release of VEGAn b5.1.1:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/archive/index.php/t-884103.html
(search for "clock " (with a space after it))
In that thread, gojimi thought it might be related to a specific run of the devices, but there didn't seem to be a resolution.
Here are a couple other posts which mention this problem, but not a solution:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/archive/index.php/t-1018754.html
http://forum.xda-developers.com/archive/index.php/t-963413.html
Others have reported it for Cyanogen. Any ideas?
Thanks in advance!
I am also experiencing this problem on Bottle of Smoke and also had it on Vega-Tab gingerbread. Even pressing soft home button goes to clock.
Also I am pretty sure that in both cases it was fine after the loading the Rom and only started after rebooting for the first or second time.
Has anybody found a solution to this rather annoying problem?
Update :-
Also on Flashback v 4.0 through to current... Definitely only starts after 1st reboot after installing rom.
Is everyone experiencing this problem or is it only some units as rumoured?
Am facing same problem on Honeycomb on my gTablet. Not sure how to reset the default for home button!
It's really unusable after this starts as we have to press Back button several times to reach the screen where we can select the apps
I've seen this on just about every ROM I've used.. Gingerbread and Honeycomb. It's real annoying.. I had having to press back a bunch of times just to get back.. UGH.
Quick reply - I've posted this elsewhere in other threads, but the problem is actually a misfiring dock indicator pin. The G Tablet thinks its docked and initiates docked behavior, of showing the clock when the home button is pressed. The solution is an app called Dock Nothingness from the Market! Thought this might help some people.
I got similar problem and brought my Galaxy W to Samsung. They said that my phone got screwed up due to wet 'usb' connector. Cleaning those pins also removed the occational fail to charge problems.
I have when I have the app tiny flashlight +led downloaded, and it's widget on the homescreen to the right of the main one that when I come from txt messenger..or hit home ( to see all the screens at once) then hit home again my screen will glitch.
Will someone please please try this to see if it is my phone, or the app. Please hit the home button a few times, and go from other apps back to main home screen and see if you get a glitch. Only seems to glitch whatever is on that main screen.. like in my case..beautiful widgets and smooth calendar widget. Also had a similar problem with visidon applock. On that one I would hit the home button and after a few times the screen previews would go all wonky.
I just need to know if my phone is messed up or if these 2 apps just cause problems with the RAZR. I just think its odd that I'm having problems with 2 different apps.
Thanks to any that help!!!
CORRECTION
both apps are now deleted and am still having the problem.
Can only describe as a screen glitch. widgets glitch out. I think you have to have some sort of widgets on the screen to see the issue. I took off all widgets other than the stock blur ones, and still have the issue.
Any help or ideas? Anyone having the same issue?
Yep I get this as well, especially on my power control plus widget.
Sent from my XT910 using XDA App
Surely this isn't normal? When I had beautiful widgets on it was SO obvious and annoying. Wondering what to do now? Take it back?
Hey all,
Just got my new OnePlusX and the first time I turned it on it prompted all the set up screens. I had to skip through them all because the keyboard would not stay open. It would open and then immediately minimize. Not a great start but no problem, I'll add my accounts and connect to wifi later.
Once I get into the 'home screen' I could see my status bar at the top but no icons and no way to access the app draw. I pressed the capacitive buttons and opened the notification slider which both worked and eventually got into the play store. From here I installed an app or two and got prompted to do a system update, which I did.
After the update I was hoping my launcher would work.. it didn't. The home screen is a black screen with the status bar at the top and no icons - the home button seems to do nothing when I'm in an app and press it.
I installed a third party launcher which worked - I now have a home screen and app draw. However, after opening an app, it crashes after a second or two (chompSMS does this as well as messenger, phone and contacts which are stock apps).
Does anyone have any information about this, what can I do here?
I know one option might be flashing a custom rom but being a brand new phone that should most definitely not be something I have to do to be able to call and message people..
Update: I ran a factory reset and all problems seemed to be resolved now. Not sure what was going on but I guess something happened that a reboot couldn't fix. I'll leave this post in case it helps others.
Have you done a factory reset after the system update??
Mojar7070 said:
Have you done a factory reset after the system update??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep factory reset fixed it, thanks!
As the title states my recents panel does not work if I use any launcher other than the stock one. This happened starting with the android 10 update. Pressing the button just shown my wallpaper and nothing else. If I set the stock launcher as the default it works fine. Anyone else with this issue? If you hit the recents button enough times you will get 'Xperia Home Keeps Stopping' message. I did a factory reset and it didn't fix it.
jaedenhudson14 said:
As the title states my recents panel does not work if I use any launcher other than the stock one. This happened starting with the android 10 update. Pressing the button just shown my wallpaper and nothing else. If I set the stock launcher as the default it works fine. Anyone else with this issue? If you hit the recents button enough times you will get 'Xperia Home Keeps Stopping' message. I did a factory reset and it didn't fix it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you're on Android 10 then Sony released it before they implemented the gestures fix. You'll need to wait for another update, possibly more for it to work
I really hope a fix is coming soon. Xperia Home launcher is working fine but I really miss the customization options of Nova....