[APP][3.x][4.x] full!screen - App to hide/replace Systembar

[Tsorn]

This little app acts as a replacement or companion to the default systembar on tablets. It can hide and restore systembar on most Android 3.x and 4.x devices.

Also like similar apps it requires root.

Unlike "GMD Hidebar" or "Hide Bar" which are recommended for simply using the device in "Kiosk mode" this app is meant to be more like an replacement for the systembar. It provides two configurable softbuttons which can be configured in position, size, color and transparency or can be completely disabled.

Several actions can be assigned to the buttons. Each button holds up to three actions, one for short, one for long click and one for swipe above the button. Possible actions:

• Nothing: Um, yeah.. this does... nothing. Not sure why I implemented this.

• Go back: Acts as the known "back" button to navigate back within apps.

• Go to homescreen: Shortcut to directly go to homescreen... just like at the original systembar

• Show recent apps: Will show a little panel to quickly switch between recently used apps. Unfortunately the well known "swipe to kill" function of the original can't be implemented because the necessary permission is only granted to apps with systems signature.

• Restore systembar: An action to quickly restore systembar. With the latest version this can also be done by notification.

• Show notifications: The second most important feature of the systembar. It shows a panel displaying the notifications. It is a complete reimplementation so some features are not available for now. The basic function works well on most devices.

• Open apps menu: Older apps usually display their menu-button within the systembar. This action now can open the menu for those apps.

• Pie Menu: Opens a configurable Pie Menu next to the touch area. This menu can be configured individually for each event.

This free version is fully functional and should be absolutely sufficient for most users. For lazy ones like me, who don't want to manually hide'n'restore systembar each time, there is a "plus"version available which automatically hides systembar for selected apps.
Oh, and yes, the free version shows a little advertisment for the plus version once in a while... if you want to get rid of it: just click this advert three times and it won't appear again. If you didn't buy the plus version after visiting it's store entry three times you probably won't ever.


please feel free to post critics, bug-reports, requests and suggestions



changelog:
1.0:
Initial release
1.1:
Improvement: wallpaper restoring much faster
Added settings for position and design of toucharea.
1.2:
Implemented panel for recently used apps
Added option for hiding systembar on boot
1.3:
Bugfixes
1.4:
Implemeted notification to quickly hide systembar
Added second touch area to use more actions
Touch areas now can be hidden completely
Fixed recentspanel not being hidden on buttonclick
Fixed toucharea not appearing under rare circumstances
1.5:
Implemented Notificationspanel
Added new action to access applications menu
Touch areas now always being composed correctly
Fixed apps malfunction on some devices (pfff.. the damn wrong environment issue most root-app-developers stumble upon)
1.5.1
Bugfixes
German translation
Visual feedback on buttonpress
1.5.2
Added information about battery, wifi and bluetooth in notificationpanels header
Support for big notifications in JellyBean
Changed unit for size of toucharea to dip (density independent pixel)
Fixed lost ability to accept calls on some phones
Added about- and contact-info
1.5.3b
No new features for now...
Service running more reliable. Should always restart after crash, manual or oom-kill
Removed full!screen from recent-apps-list (people swipe'n'killed full!screen from that list and wondered why it wouldn't work anymore )
1.6b1
few bugfixes.
New action: Pie Menu... this opens a Pie menu next to the touch area which can be freely configured for any event.
New event: Swipe... a third action can be assigned to the button which will be invoked when swiping over the button.
New extended options: activate them within the apps Options menu to freely change color and feedback of touch areas or to change long click timeout.
1.6
just bugfixes

 

[TheMorpheus]

Works good, I just need the notification area back and it's perfect!!

 

[DesignGrits]

Works great for me.

Suggestions:

Multi colors
allow back button to exit the recent apps. Could not find any way to exit the recent apps when selected.

 

[Speedier]

Sweet, this works for ICS too? Gonna try it out now.

 

[Tsorn]

Works great for me.

Suggestions:

Multi colors
allow back button to exit the recent apps. Could not find any way to exit the recent apps when selected.

Thanks for your feedback.

The recent apps panel should be closed when tapping on back button or anywhere alse outside the panel.
Well there is indeed a issue when "short click action" is set to something else than "Go back". Then tapping on button does not hide the panel. Did you mean this? I'll fix that.

 

[Tsorn]

I just got a message the wallpaper-workaround does not work at all on one device.
Since the wallpaper-issue was one of my main topics I am eager to solve this.

At least me and some testers never ran into this problem: if anyone else experiences this, please drop me a line. I need to collect some information to delimit that issue.

 

[Tsorn]

update:

the latest version now introduces the missing Notifications Panel.

At least for me the missing access to notifications was the only reason to ever restore the original systembar. So now it nearly always stays hidden.
A little drawback: new notifications so far are only being reported by sound. My own tablet doesn't have a LED and Vibro, so I personally am not missing this.

Hope you like it!

 

[Stevethegreat]

Great little app and I would be happy to shell a couple of bucks for it, one suggestion if I may though: it seems to be the case that all those who develop this kind of on-screen button apps forget to put a feedback for when the button is being pressed (momentary change of color preferably).

Since your app seems to be of the most complete offerings I think it would be great if you were to implement it in a given future. Android devices are often no strangers to lag so a feedback of any kind (that the button was actually pressed) I think it would improve the usability by quite a lot and hopefully it is easy to be implemented too...

Again thanks for this great app, here's looking forward for future updates

 

[Tsorn]

..., it seems to be the case that all those who develop this kind of on-screen button apps forget to put a feedback for when the button is being pressed (momentary change of color preferably).

Seems that those developers hardly ever imagine to operate an Android device with somthing else than their big Wurstfinger-thumbs
When I use the app I don't see the buttons since they are completely covered by my fingers. But you are right, when using eg. one of those attach-to-TV-Android-sticks which are operated by mouse and keyboard, and having systems touch sounds disabled, there is no feedback at all.. It's pretty easy to implement such optical feedback, soon to be done.

thanks for your suggestion.

 

[Stevethegreat]

Seems that those developers hardly ever imagine to operate an Android device with somthing else than their big Wurstfinger-thumbs
When I use the app I don't see the buttons since they are completely covered by my fingers. But you are right, when using eg. one of those attach-to-TV-Android-sticks which are operated by mouse and keyboard, and having systems touch sounds disabled, there is no feedback at all.. It's pretty easy to implement such optical feedback, soon to be done.

thanks for your suggestion.

Thanks

Not much else to suggest -I guess- sort from allowing more actions (through the press of the buttons) but that can be done later... oh and a way to have the buttons accessible regardless of being fullscreen or not (for those who'd love to have "hot corners" at all times)... oh and a minor bug report now that we're at it: upon reboot the app gets superuser permission but does not procede to enable the service (even though I have "enable at boot" selected).

Again thanks for this great app, loving it so far

 

[darrenjdoc]

This works really well on the Nexus 7. I was using GMD gesture control and i had remapped my volume buttons so they could be used as back and home but this is much handier. I can now have my buttons back.

Many thanks

 

[darrenjdoc]

I bought the paid version.
I have been looking an app like this for a while, tried others but this is perfect for what i want.

Top job!!

 

[Tsorn]

The latest version includes visual feedback for button-press. I chose a not to flashy color, hope you like it. I am thinking of implementing the before suggested user-colorable buttons but this may take some time...

Thanks
... oh and a minor bug report now that we're at it: upon reboot the app gets superuser permission but does not procede to enable the service (even though I have "enable at boot" selected).

mhh, I could only confirm this behaviour when setting SuperSu to prompt for granting su-access to the app. Which su-Manager are you using?
Did you set your su-Manager to automatically grant access to full!screen? This is necessary because the timeout waiting for su-access is set to 10 seconds... Since full!screen uses that accessibility-service it gets loaded at very early stage... far before other apps get loaded. Depending on how long it takes to fully load the system the timeout might occur even before the su-Manager gets a chance to Display it's confirmation-dialog.

 

[Stevethegreat]

The latest version includes visual feedback for button-press. I chose a not to flashy color, hope you like it. I am thinking of implementing the before suggested user-colorable buttons but this may take some time...




mhh, I could only confirm this behaviour when setting SuperSu to prompt for granting su-access to the app. Which su-Manager are you using?
Did you set your su-Manager to automatically grant access to full!screen? This is necessary because the timeout waiting for su-access is set to 10 seconds... Since full!screen uses that accessibility-service it gets loaded at very early stage... far before other apps get loaded. Depending on how long it takes to fully load the system the timeout might occur even before the su-Manager gets a chance to Display it's confirmation-dialog.

I was usuing "superuser" so maybe that was why; once I've installed superSu the issue went away and now it boots with my system I've I asked it to


As for the visual feedback it works great but it goes away a bit too soon (Google's own feedback lasts quite a bit longer when one presses -say- the home button) and also it's less than visible when one uses low opacity. I like how the color is discrete though, great choice :good:

All in all I'll recommend this to friends what a great app

 

[dmbardal]

BugReport:

While using the app, SnapChat wont work. It FCs. When turning off fullscreen, it works.
Edit: To be to the point; One can take a picture with snapchat and put a comment on it, but when you press "send" it FCs.

 

[Tsorn]

BugReport:

While using the app, SnapChat wont work. It FCs. When turning off fullscreen, it works.
Edit: To be to the point; One can take a picture with snapchat and put a comment on it, but when you press "send" it FCs.

installed this SnapChat on my tablet and could send and receive pictures without problems. I am just to blind to find a place to enter a comment to the picture!?
Anyway, I doubt I could do anything about another app complaining about missing systembar or something...
Is it a phone you installed the app to? ... there are some problems known with phone devices like not receiving calls anymore.. may be it's some related problem. :-/

 

[dmbardal]

installed this SnapChat on my tablet and could send and receive pictures without problems. I am just to blind to find a place to enter a comment to the picture!?
Anyway, I doubt I could do anything about another app complaining about missing systembar or something...
Is it a phone you installed the app to? ... there are some problems known with phone devices like not receiving calls anymore.. may be it's some related problem. :-/

You just click the screen for adding a comment.
Anyhow, yes. Its a phone. Its my Xperia V.
I got quite a few apps tho, so it might just aswell be any other app aswell.
But I found it to good to be a coincidence when I disabled fullscreen and then it worked.

The FC still happends when I dont comment btw.
But it might be SC complaining ofcourse. But its no problem, I just added an invisible button to get the systembar back before I take pictures with SC.

Your app is the only one working properly btw. the lower left and right buttons that you've added are perfect. I can make them small and invisible wich makes it perfect. GREAT job!
Keep up the good work.

 

[TheGSL]

I'd like the option to have the notification bar on, but the onscreen buttons off, with just the corner buttons etc., if that makes sense. I like having the notification bar on, I think it's useful. Apologies if there is a way to do this already, I couldn't seem to find it.

It would be good if it rearranged the app icons too to fill the extra space better.

Or alternatively, I would like notification on, original onscreen buttons on but transparent with screen visible behind them, that would be a good option too, I think.

Thanks for the app though.

 

[Tsorn]

I'd like the option to have the notification bar on, but the onscreen buttons off, with just the corner buttons etc., if that makes sense. I like having the notification bar on, I think it's useful. Apologies if there is a way to do this already, I couldn't seem to find it.

It would be good if it rearranged the app icons too to fill the extra space better.

Or alternatively, I would like notification on, original onscreen buttons on but transparent with screen visible behind them, that would be a good option too, I think.

Thanks for the app though.

Unfortunately that not possible at all... at least not without patching original systemUI. Buttons bar and notifications bar are created by the same process. Disabling this process obviously means disabling both bars. I might implement an internal UI similar to the original systemUI some day. But thats at the end of a long list of wishes and suggestions I got so far, because it would take much, much work.

 

[Arcano]

Re: [App][3.x][4.x] full!screen - App to hide/replace Systembar

Hi, this program is almost perfect for me, but I have a question: given that it's oriented towards tablets, ¿do you foresee any problem using it in a phone?. I've installed the free version in my Xperia T and it seems to work alright, but I want to be sure.

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