[Android 3.0+, ROOT] TabletBar Hider - fullscreen in Honeycomb without system bar!

Facegarden · Aug 21, 2011

TabletBar Hider

Want to use your honeycomb tablet in *true* fullscreen, without that pesky system bar in the way? Now you can! (REQUIRES ROOT!)

This app allows you to hide the system bar in landscape mode, where it gets in the way the most. Then, if you need to access it to leave the app, just rotate your tablet to portrait and the bar appears. When you're done, rotate it back to landscape and the bar disappears again. You can go back to the app and end that behavior at any time.

There is currently an issue with apps that prevent rotation - you may get stuck in them! But worst case, you can always reboot and everything goes back to normal. I will work on a fix for that if people like the app!

I am new to Android app development so please let me know if there are any issues! I have created a free demo version that you can run to verify that the app will properly hide and restore the system bar on your tablet. I have tested this on a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 but not others yet! So please make sure to try the demo first.

Note that the demo is only for verifying that the app can kill and restore the system bar. It does not feature the automatic rotation service that the full version contains.

Screenshots of full version attached to post

Demo
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.tlalexander.tabletbarhiderdemo

Full Version
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.tlalexander.tabletbarhider

mughalgxt · Aug 21, 2011

Well thought! tested the demo and working well on arabic rom p7510jpkg5. Though expected demo to be a little more useful beyond just hiding and restoring the bottom bar. Couldn't revert to home screen after applying the tweak. The full version could have been free.

well done.

seawax · Aug 21, 2011

It's useful...thanks

ggrant3876 · Aug 21, 2011

Works great on my Xoom but some time in future development it would be nice to have the option of a transparent status bar too.

Psychokitty · Aug 21, 2011

Bought it in hopes that you'll be further developing it. Further development on this that could really turn heads would be access to the full apps list with the ability to check mark which ones you want the taskbar hider to work with (and more importantly, which ones you don't).
Great idea. Looking forward to where this might go.

arrtoodeetoo · Aug 21, 2011

Please consider making it work with multitouch gestures.

I have my tablet set to always stay in Landscape mode (unless an app forces me into portrait mode). So the current way of hiding and restoring the status bar is a PITA.

What you could (should) do is this.

Two finger swipe down off of the screen = Hide status bar.
Two finger swipe up onto the screen = Restore status bar.

Does that make sense?

It's a great start!

paratox · Aug 21, 2011

arrtoodeetoo said:
Two finger swipe down off of the screen = Hide status bar.
Two finger swipe up onto the screen = Restore status bar.

+1
this would be really nice!

turtlegss · Aug 21, 2011

It would be great if it would work with wizz or have like a wiz type bar where i can click bottom middle during any app and bring up home and back and multi task and then even better like wizz i can add my own!

edit:
on adw ex I have swipe down as notifications. with this thing enabled. I swipe down and my notifications dont pop up

really wished that I could swipe down for my notifications with the bar off

O well, guess its good for specific apps although I would really like to see it as a more accessible thing like wizzbar

Facegarden · Aug 21, 2011

mughalgxt said:
Well thought! tested the demo and working well on arabic rom p7510jpkg5. Though expected demo to be a little more useful beyond just hiding and restoring the bottom bar. Couldn't revert to home screen after applying the tweak. The full version could have been free.
well done.

Yes, I know its a simple app and it could be free, but this is kind of an experiment for me to see if I can make money writing apps. It also will provide the encouragement I need to keep developing it. And yeah, the demo is just to make sure people don't get stuck buying the paid app and have it not work. Its not really intended to be useful.

Psychokitty said:
Bought it in hopes that you'll be further developing it. Further development on this that could really turn heads would be access to the full apps list with the ability to check mark which ones you want the taskbar hider to work with (and more importantly, which ones you don't).
Great idea. Looking forward to where this might go.

Hey that's a great idea! I'll look into that.

arrtoodeetoo said:
Please consider making it work with multitouch gestures.

I have my tablet set to always stay in Landscape mode (unless an app forces me into portrait mode). So the current way of hiding and restoring the status bar is a PITA.

What you could (should) do is this.

Two finger swipe down off of the screen = Hide status bar.
Two finger swipe up onto the screen = Restore status bar.

Does that make sense?

It's a great start!

Actually I was originally going to hook into the volume buttons, and have one hide it and one restore it, but I found that background services don't have access to the volume buttons. Orientation was less ideal, but It was something I could hook into from the background. I'm not sure if background services can see the gestures, but I will look into it! One thing I know I can do is look at the accelerometer instead of the orientation. That way even if you're locked, you can still rotate to show the bar. Of course.. then its sideways, and that's weird. But thanks for the words of encouragement as well!

turtlegss said:
It would be great if it would work with wizz or have like a wiz type bar where i can click bottom middle during any app and bring up home and back and multi task and then even better like wizz i can add my own!

edit:
on adw ex I have swipe down as notifications. with this thing enabled. I swipe down and my notifications dont pop up really wished that I could swipe down for my notifications with the bar off

O well, guess its good for specific apps although I would really like to see it as a more accessible thing like wizzbar

Ooh, yeah the app kills the process that contains the notifications, so that is one area where it won't work. Also, I said this above but I'm not sure if I can see gestures from a background process. But I will look into it for sure! That would definitely be better.

I also realized that if I implement the suggestion above about selecting which apps to disable my app on, I could have it also disabled on the home screen. That would be nice.

-Taylor

Facegarden · Aug 22, 2011

So, I just realized that the Market app doesn't allow rotation, and it can appear that you're stuck. I will definitely have to add a way to filter which apps this is enabled for.

For the meantime, you're not actually stuck in Market. Just use the menu on the top right and go to "Contact us" and it will open the browser.

Silly, for sure. I'll try to add the fix soon. Probably not till the weekend though.

-Taylor

hipocrazy · Aug 22, 2011

arrtoodeetoo said:
What you could (should) do is this.

Two finger swipe down off of the screen = Hide status bar.
Two finger swipe up onto the screen = Restore status bar.

+1

Awesome Work!

rebill · Aug 23, 2011

I have Wavelauncher installed and it's a good workaround. If I'm in an app that won't rotate I just swipe for Wavelaunch. It can show recent apps and user defined apps. If the app you want isn't listed, just pick one that does portrait to get the system bar back. If this app can come up there must be a way for you to do a swipe gesture to bring the bar back,

Anyway, thanks for this app! Love watching movies without the bar at the bottom!

Sent from my Xoom using XDA Premium App

hipocrazy · Aug 23, 2011

I actually found virtual button bar in the market, works like a dream. Lovin the fullscreen now!
]

StrifeSoldierVII · Aug 23, 2011

A nice feature would be:
Have the system bar timeout and hide itself after a set time amount of inactivity. Say... if you do not touch anything that has to do with the system bar for a whole minute, it will automatically hide itself. Swiping up could bring it back up or something like that. Would be extremely useful. Kinda like how Windows has the auto hide taskbar feature to give more screen space.

Honestly, I think auto hiding the system bar should be something Google should cook up and bring natively to the Honeycomb tablets. It makes sense to do that if you think about it. I know that the icons and such will dim down to white dots after a few seconds while using certain parts of the system apps, but something like auto hiding the entire system bar altogether will be far superior.

Psychokitty · Aug 24, 2011

I still like the idea of checking off the apps this is allowed to work in on a list. I imagine that's a lot of work.
Perhaps in the mean time, you could implement a hidden button that could toggle the taskbar by tapping in the extreme upper right or left corner. That (I imagine) should be a lot simpler to do for the time being.

I wouldn't hesitate to spend $2.00-2.50 on the finished app.

john85D · Aug 25, 2011

I hope you could get it to work with the international 3G Xoom. MZ601

Facegarden · Aug 26, 2011

Hey guys,

Man, I don't get what the deal is with forums *not* e-mailing me even though I have notifications enabled.

But yeah, I have been brainstorming ways to make this work better. The simplest idea, and what I will try to enable this weekend, is shaking the tablet to toggle the bar.

Hooking into rotation was the simplest thing and I just wanted to get off the ground and see if people liked it. Clearly you guys do (thanks!) so I gotta make this app easier to use.

I looked up how to do swiping, and apparently background apps are not supposed to have access to touch events, for security (imagine if an app secretly waited till your banking app was running and then watched locations pressed on the screen when you typed your password). So people seem to think apps that run in the background and read swipes are using some kind of unsupported security holes, and my initial search only found people not willing to talk about it. Still, I haven't spent much time on it yet, busy week!

But I will look at it this weekend and see what I can do to improve it. I also gotta shoot a youtube videos as I have what feels like a high rate of returns - I think it would be really helpful if people saw how it worked before downloading.

And I finally got a review, yay! Of course if you have any opinions on the app I'd love a review!

john85D said:
I hope you could get it to work with the international 3G Xoom. MZ601

Does it not? Is your tablet rooted? This app cannot work without root, unfortunately.

john85D · Aug 26, 2011

Let me rephrase it. According to the market, your app is not compatible with my MZ601. When i do a search through the market it doesn't come up in the list. Its strange though since I was able to download your tester and it worked. I really would like to have this on my Xoom. And yes' I am rooted and running the Hammerhead ROM.

Have you checked your spam folder? A lot of times emails get marked as spam specially ibes coming from forums.

Facegarden · Aug 26, 2011

john85D said:
Let me rephrase it. According to the market, your app is not compatible with my MZ601. When i do a search through the market it doesn't come up in the list. Its strange though since I was able to download your tester and it worked. I really would like to have this on my Xoom. And yes' I am rooted and running the Hammerhead ROM.

Have you checked your spam folder? A lot of times emails get marked as spam specially ibes coming from forums.

Hmm... weird. I haven't purposefully hidden it from any devices. As far as I am aware it should work with every Honeycomb device.

I'll look into that this weekend.

And I checked my spam folder. Nothing there. I'll double check my notification settings.
-Taylor

john85D · Aug 27, 2011

Facegarden said:
Hmm... weird. I haven't purposefully hidden it from any devices. As far as I am aware it should work with every Honeycomb device.

I'll look into that this weekend.

And I checked my spam folder. Nothing there. I'll double check my notification settings.
-Taylor

Thanks. Looking forward to having it.

[Android 3.0+, ROOT] TabletBar Hider - fullscreen in Honeycomb without system bar!

Senior Member

Attachments

Senior Member

New member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

New member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Member

Senior Member

Member

Senior Member

Member

Similar threads

Top Liked Posts