OESF Portables Forum
Model Specific Forums => Gemini PDA => Gemini PDA - Android => Topic started by: mggr on May 21, 2018, 07:59:42 am
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Reference the three onscreen buttons... triangle, circle and square... I'll refer to them as the 3 Playstation buttons...
How can I suppress these? The reason I ask is that on Netflix, they almost entirely overlay the download buttons on the Netflix screen, they don't appear transparent as they do on other pages...
At some point I did manage to rid the screen of these Playstation buttons during viewing the Netflix download page, which made the experience far more enjoyable.
To see what I mean, you can see the download buttons for Netflix just about behind the Playstation buttons overlay... The blue circle is one episode downloading, the other is a down arrow download symbol.
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I'm sure other apps will be affected by these, a keyboard button would be great to turn it off and on!
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Hi and welcome! That part of the screen is called "navigation bar", or "soft keys" (although I like the "Playstation buttons" name better ). There's already another thread on the subject, though with no definitive answer:
https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=34923 (https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=34923)
There's anyway a number of apps which should get rid of that bar, please report back if you find any of them to be working on the Gemini:
https://android.gadgethacks.com/news/best-a...estate-0162519/ (https://android.gadgethacks.com/news/best-apps-for-hiding-androids-soft-keys-reclaim-precious-screen-real-estate-0162519/)
Varti
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Hi and welcome! That part of the screen is called "navigation bar", or "soft keys" (although I like the "Playstation buttons" name better ). There's already another thread on the subject, though with no definitive answer:
https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=34923 (https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=34923)
There's anyway a number of apps which should get rid of that bar, please report back if you find any of them to be working on the Gemini:
https://android.gadgethacks.com/news/best-a...estate-0162519/ (https://android.gadgethacks.com/news/best-apps-for-hiding-androids-soft-keys-reclaim-precious-screen-real-estate-0162519/)
Varti
Hi Varti,
Thank you for the reply, sorry I didn't spot the other thread with the same subject... I will endeavour to find a solution!
cheers
mggr
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Thank you for the reply, sorry I didn't spot the other thread with the same subject... I will endeavour to find a solution!
No worries, when I read your post I remembered there was a similar thread, but I took me a while to find it. I'm also looking forward for a solution; once I'll receive my Gemini I believe I'll also like to get rid of that bar.
Varti
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It turns out that you can turn off the soft keys if you have rooted your Android install. I used Termux, but I'm quite experienced with a unix commandline.
You need to edit /system/build.prop and find the line
qemu.hw.mainkeys=0
and change it to:
qemu.hw.mainkeys=1
The /system volume is mounted readonly so even as root you cannot simply write to that file. As root you can
mount -o rw,remount /system
to make it writable, but while it is writable, any process with write access can change it. You should change it back as quickly as possible after changing that file with:
mount -o ro,remount /system
For those who don't know what I just typed, you might find the following you tube video helpful:
https://youtu.be/ePz7BElFe8g (https://youtu.be/ePz7BElFe8g)
And once you are done reboot, the buttons will be gone.
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Once you have turned the soft keys off, you use ESC for back, Fn A for showing the running apps and Fn D for the launch menu.
Alt Left Arrow can be used to go back a page in Chrome.
The only thing I miss is the long press of the square key to split screen. Does anyone have a solution for that?
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Once you have turned the soft keys off, you use ESC for back, Fn A for showing the running apps and Fn D for the launch menu.
Alt Left Arrow can be used to go back a page in Chrome.
The only thing I miss is the long press of the square key to split screen. Does anyone have a solution for that?
It's not quite as convenient but you can long press on the title bar of an app when it the task switcher screen (Alt+Tab or Fn+A) and then drag the app to the left of the screen
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Thank you so much! That is convenient enough.