AAE 0.6.1

Mac, Windows and AAE Remote are all at 0.6.1 again. Windows and AAE Remote skipped 0.6.0, so their changes since 0.5.1 are listed here too.

Device hardware

• Memory, processor cores and storage can be chosen when creating a device: New Device on Mac and Windows, New Device in AAE Remote, aae create --memory --cores --storage, and the MCP create_device tool. An empty field keeps AAE's default. Values are checked before an Android version downloads.
• New devices with Google Play get 16 GB of storage; others keep 6 GB. Google Play filled most of 8 GB once it updated its apps.
• Storage changes and wipes: memory and cores apply at the next start. More storage applies at the next start on older Android versions, but on versions with encrypted storage, such as Android 16, only after a wipe; less storage always needs a wipe. Hardware and aae hardware now say when.

Fixes

• Android 5 and 6 devices: apps install (adb install -g isn't supported there), and setup completes: the full keyboard, audio check, speech check, services list and language setting work. AAE's helper is 0.31.0. An app too new for the device gets a plain error naming the device's Android version.
• Starting a device, from Windows users' reports:
  • AAE creates the emulator's .android folder when it's missing.
  • Starting stops at once when hardware acceleration is missing, with how to turn it on.
  • When the emulator's control service doesn't answer, the error names the port and the reason.
• AAE Remote's keyboard mode types the characters the phone's keyboard layout typed.

Mac only

• Googlebook devices: the first speech after a start is no longer lost. Android Versions and aae remove-image --googlebook list and delete Googlebook OS.
• Googlebook devices arrived in 0.6.0; see that release.

Installing

• Mac: AAE-0.6.1.dmg, or Check for Updates in the AAE menu. First open: System Settings, Privacy & Security, Open Anyway.
• Windows: AAE-0.6.1-windows-x64-setup.exe, or Help, Check for Updates. SmartScreen: More info, Run anyway.
• Android: AAE-Remote-0.6.1.apk, or Check for Updates in AAE Remote. Play Protect: More details, Install anyway.

AAE Remote's new hardware fields need AAE 0.6.1 on the computer.

Development build (69da383)

Development build 28 of AAE, made from the latest change on master. It's for testing, before a stable release, and is replaced by each new change.

Built from 69da383: Release AAE 0.6.1

Help, About AAE, says which build you have; please include that, or a diagnostic report, when reporting a problem.

Windows

Download AAE-dev-windows-x64-setup.exe below and run it. It installs AAE for you alone, with no administrator prompt, replacing the AAE you have, and adds it to the Start menu. README.txt, in the folder AAE is installed in, explains what's needed and how it works. Check for Updates doesn't offer development builds; it offers the next stable release when there is one. In PowerShell, this fetches and runs the latest one:

irm https://github.com/aaron-gh/accessible-android-emulator/releases/download/dev/AAE-dev-windows-x64-setup.exe -OutFile ~/Downloads/AAE-dev-setup.exe; & ~/Downloads/AAE-dev-setup.exe

AAE isn't signed for Windows yet, so SmartScreen may say it protected your PC. Choose More info, then Run anyway.

Mac

Download AAE-dev.dmg below, open it, and drag AAE to Applications, replacing the AAE you have. It's version 0.6.1-dev.28. It's signed like stable releases, so AAE keeps its permissions. Check for Updates doesn't offer development builds; it offers the next stable release when there is one. The first time, macOS may say it can't check AAE: go to System Settings, Privacy & Security, and choose Open Anyway.

Android: AAE Remote

AAE Remote uses the devices on a Mac or PC running AAE from an Android phone, with their sound and vibrations on the phone. Download AAE-Remote-dev.apk below on the phone and install it; Android may ask to allow installing apps from your browser. On the computer, turn on File, Serve Devices to Phones, or run aae serve, then pair the phone with the code it shows. It needs Android 8 or later; gesture mode needs Android 11.

AAE 0.6.0

Googlebook devices

Mac with Apple silicon only.

• Googlebook OS (Android 17, desktop) in a QEMU virtual machine. New Device lists it as "Googlebook OS (Android 17), virtual machine"; aae create <name> --googlebook.
• Installed on first use, into AAE's data folder: AAE's Googlebook components (8 MB), UTM 5.0.6 for its QEMU (300 MB), Google's Cuttlefish image (1.1 GB) and Google's recovery image for the Dell Googlebook (7.6 GB), each checked against a pinned SHA-256; downloads resume. The assembled disk is about 20 GB; each device's disk is a copy-on-write clone of it.
• Setup, screen reader, AAE's helper, speech log, speech bridge, inspector, apps, keys and gestures work as on emulator devices. Volume, mute and audio output work.
• Stop shuts Android down; there is no quick-boot snapshot. Start takes about 45 seconds.
• Not available: snapshots, rotation, folding, battery, location, phone and text messages, fingerprint, shake, microphone, clipboard, hardware changes, export.

Based on gbos-vm by Skylar Taylor-Barrick (MIT). The source of the GPL and LGPL programs in AAE's components is in release googlebook-components-1.

Windows and Android

Unchanged: Windows and AAE Remote stay at 0.5.1, attached here as released.

Installing

• Mac: AAE-0.6.0.dmg, or Check for Updates in the AAE menu. First open: System Settings, Privacy & Security, Open Anyway.
• Windows: AAE-0.5.1-windows-x64-setup.exe, or Help, Check for Updates. SmartScreen: More info, Run anyway.
• Android: AAE-Remote-0.5.1.apk, or Check for Updates in AAE Remote. Play Protect: More details, Install anyway.

AAE 0.5.1

Keyboard

• Keyboard layouts for 52 languages, each Android's own with AAE's PC keys (Meta, Escape, Home and End as keys). The apps use the layout for the computer's keyboard and switch when it changes. On a Mac, keys typed without Command, Control or Option are sent as the characters the Mac typed, so Mac layouts that differ from PC ones, such as British, type the right characters. aae keyboard <device> [layout|auto] chooses one; --list lists them. aae attach follows the terminal's language.

Devices

• Cold Boot, in the Device menu, AAE Remote, aae start --cold and MCP: starts Android without the saved state, and deletes it. Stops the device first if it's running.
• Foldable devices: a Foldable size, and Fold and Unfold in the Device menu, AAE Remote, aae fold, aae unfold and MCP.
• A device whose Android shut down on an empty battery is cold booted with the battery charged, instead of never finishing starting.
• A device with a screen lock that was cold booted is reported as locked, and AAE's helper now works at the lock screen.

Gesture mode

• W also gives the touch point's pixel position, as aae gesture --at takes it.
• D reads every property of the element at the touch point. aae inspect <device> --at X,Y prints the same.

AAE Remote

• Touch point mode: a long press of volume up in gesture mode switches to it and back. Two-finger swipes move between elements, one-finger swipes move a step, touch and hold then drag moves the point, taps act at the point, and two-finger taps say where it is, read its properties, or go back to the middle.
• Tablets and unfolded phones show two screens side by side.
• Related buttons in rows on the device screen and Testing Tools; the accessibility inspector starts with its sections collapsed.
• Settings are kept in device-protected storage.

Fixes

• Windows: saving Settings crashed the app.
• Where the emulator can't use the graphics adapter, AAE switches to software rendering at once, instead of after minutes.
• Package, permission and component names with shell characters are refused; an MCP agent could otherwise run commands on the device.
• Diagnostic reports no longer include the emulator's access token.
• The inspector no longer says "-1 items" for lists, or "not checked" twice.

Installing

• Mac: AAE-0.5.1.dmg, or Check for Updates in the AAE menu. First open: System Settings, Privacy & Security, Open Anyway.
• Windows: AAE-0.5.1-windows-x64-setup.exe, or Help, Check for Updates. SmartScreen: More info, Run anyway.
• Android: AAE-Remote-0.5.1.apk, or Check for Updates in AAE Remote. Play Protect: More details, Install anyway.

Googlebook components 1

Components AAE downloads to set up Googlebook devices (Googlebook OS in a virtual machine, Apple silicon Macs). AAE installs them itself; there's nothing to download here by hand.

• aae-googlebook-1.tar.gz: virglrenderer with a macOS buffer-sharing patch, Mesa (VirGL GLES and Venus Vulkan) built for Android, the VM launcher, and the image tools (erofs-utils, sepolicy-allow).
• aae-googlebook-1-sources.tar.gz: the source of erofs-utils, libsepol and lz4, and the build scripts.

Built by googlebook/build.sh. Licences: googlebook/NOTICE.md.

AAE 0.5.0

Speech and audio

• Speech bridge: Device, Turn On Speech Bridge sends the device's screen reader speech to the host's text-to-speech instead of as audio. Continuous reading works; earcons stay in device audio.
  • Mac: AVSpeechSynthesizer, with VoiceOver's voice and rate when VoiceOver runs, otherwise Spoken Content's.
  • Windows: NVDA 2024.1 or later, otherwise SAPI 5.
  • AAE Remote: the phone's text-to-speech, with engine and rate in Bridge Text-to-Speech Settings.
  • aae speech-bridge <device> on|off|listen.
• Microphone: Turn On Microphone sends the host microphone into the device while an app on it records. Check Microphone injects a test tone and reports whether it was recorded. Play Audio File into Microphone plays WAV, MP3, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis or M4A from the start of the next recording. AAE Remote sends the phone's microphone. aae mic.
• Audio output per device: Device, Audio Output (Windows), Audio output in the main window (Mac), aae audio-output.
• Turning the speech log on or off no longer restarts the screen reader.
• Mac announcements use the Spoken Content voice and rate when VoiceOver is off.

Device conditions

• Display and Language: language (including pseudo-locales en-XA and ar-XB), font size, display size, dark theme, bold text, high contrast text, colour inversion, colour correction, animations, captions, touch and hold delay. Use These Settings for New Devices. aae settings.
• Network: airplane mode, Wi-Fi, mobile data, and speed from full to GPRS. aae network.
• Battery health, fingerprint touches (fingers 1 to 10) and shake. aae battery --health, aae fingerprint, aae shake.
• GPX routes: Play GPX Route moves the location along a track, route or waypoints. aae route.
• Power, Assistant and volume buttons in the Device menu.

Devices

• Hardware: memory, cores, storage, screen size and density for stopped devices. aae hardware.
• Export and import: a device with its apps, data, settings and snapshots as one .aaedevice file. aae export, aae import.
• Return-to-host shortcut: Settings offers Control-Shift-Command-Escape or Control-Option-Command-Escape (Mac), Control-Shift-Windows-Escape or Control-Alt-Windows-Escape (Windows).
• The apps reconnect to a device restarted by another AAE process, such as aae.

Testing tools

• Record Screen: screen and audio to WebM, up to three minutes. aae record.
• Accessibility Inspector: Follow the screen refreshes when the screen changes; Save as HTML. aae inspect --follow, --html.
• MCP tools: device_settings, network, touch_fingerprint, shake, play_route, stop_route, play_into_microphone, start_recording, stop_recording.

Other

• Unpairing a phone takes effect immediately.
• Shorter, plainer text throughout the apps and aae help.

Installing

• Mac: AAE-0.5.0.dmg, or Check for Updates in the AAE menu. First open: System Settings, Privacy & Security, Open Anyway.
• Windows: AAE-0.5.0-windows-x64-setup.exe, or Help, Check for Updates. SmartScreen: More info, Run anyway.
• Android: AAE-Remote-0.5.0.apk, or Check for Updates in AAE Remote. Play Protect: More details, Install anyway.

AAE 0.4.0

AAE 0.4.0 brings AAE Remote, an Android app that uses the devices on your Mac or PC from your phone. Google's emulator can't run on a phone, so the devices run on the computer, and the phone is their remote.

AAE Remote

• Sound and vibration on the phone: while a device is open, its sound plays on the phone, and its vibrations play on the phone's vibrator as they felt on the device: the screen reader's ticks and clicks, at the same strength.
• Managing devices: list, create, start, stop, restart, wipe, copy, rename and delete them; download Android versions, after reading and accepting Google's licence on the phone, and delete them; set up and update the emulator and tools.
• Keyboard mode: with a keyboard connected to the phone, every key goes to the device. Control-Shift-Escape, or a long press of volume down, comes back.
• Gesture mode: the phone's screen becomes the device's touchscreen, with every finger, so the device's screen reader gets your gestures. Its accessibility service, AAE gesture mode, lets touches past your phone's screen reader while gesture mode is open, and nowhere else. It works with TalkBack, Backtalk and others.
• Testing tools: the speech log, device log, accessibility inspector, apps and permissions, accessibility services, snapshots, battery, location and phone, links and intents, the clipboard, and installing an APK from the phone.
• Keeps going: the sound keeps playing with the screen off, and the app reconnects by itself when Wi-Fi drops.
• Updates itself, from stable releases, or development builds if you choose.

It needs Android 8 or later, and gesture mode needs Android 11.

Serving devices to phones

• On the Mac or PC, choose File, Serve Devices to Phones, and turn serving on. Pair the phone with the twelve-character code AAE shows and speaks. The connection is encrypted, and the phone remembers the computer, so it won't connect to anything pretending to be it.
• Serving at login: turn on "Keep serving whenever I log in, without AAE open", or run aae daemon install.
• Headless: aae serve serves a computer's devices with no screen, speakers or app, with all their sound going to the phone. aae pair makes a pairing code, and aae phones lists and unpairs phones.

Fixes

• Quitting AAE while a device is stopping now waits for the stop, so the emulator isn't left running.
• Speak Status names the screen reader, as "Backtalk is on".
• An app with code only for ARM processors, installed on a device for Intel and AMD computers, gets a message saying what to do. Devices with no speech engine get eSpeak NG straight away.

Installing

• Android: on the phone, download AAE-Remote-0.4.0.apk and install it. Android may ask to allow installing apps from your browser. Google Play Protect may say it hasn't seen an app from this developer: choose More details, then Install anyway. To use gesture mode, turn on AAE gesture mode in Android's accessibility settings; if Android says it's a restricted setting, open Settings, Apps, AAE Remote, the More options menu, and choose Allow restricted settings.
• Windows: run AAE-0.4.0-windows-x64-setup.exe, or choose Check for Updates in the Help menu. SmartScreen may say it protected your PC: choose More info, then Run anyway. The first time you serve devices, Windows may ask whether to allow AAE through its firewall: allow it.
• Mac: download AAE-0.4.0.dmg, or choose Check for Updates in the AAE menu. The first time, go to System Settings, Privacy & Security, and choose Open Anyway.

AAE 0.3.1

• Faster devices: devices now draw their screens with the computer's graphics adapter. Until now, the emulator chose software drawing, on the processor, for every device, even on computers with a good graphics card. If the emulator can't use the graphics adapter, AAE starts the device again in software and keeps it that way. Existing devices change at their next start.
• Speech on first start: a speech engine that was slow to answer on a device's first start was treated as broken, which could leave the device silent with "Even eSpeak NG failed". AAE now gives slow engines time.
• System requirements: AAE's setup, self-test and aae setup say when a computer is below what AAE needs: a processor with at least 6 threads, such as an Intel Core i5 or AMD Ryzen 5, and 8 GB of memory. Low-power chips such as the Intel N100 and N150 are too slow. Devices now get half the computer's threads, up to 4, so a small processor isn't starved. The README lists the requirements.
• Diagnostic reports: they now name the processor, the graphics adapters, and how each device is drawn. They take out more personal details: the account name in any form of path, the emulator's adb key, and its temporary folder. When a device doesn't start in time, AAE now points to the diagnostic report, not the raw emulator log.

Installing

• Windows: run AAE-0.3.1-windows-x64-setup.exe, or choose Check for Updates in the Help menu. AAE isn't signed for Windows yet, so SmartScreen may say it protected your PC: choose More info, then Run anyway.
• Mac: download AAE-0.3.1.dmg, open it and drag AAE to Applications, or choose Check for Updates in the AAE menu. The first time, go to System Settings, Privacy & Security, and choose Open Anyway.

AAE 0.3.0

AAE 0.3.0 is the first stable release for Windows. The Mac app hasn't changed since 0.2.2; it shares the version number.

Windows

The Windows app now has the Mac app's windows, with its shortcuts, using Control for Command and Alt for Option:

• Accessibility Inspector (Control-Alt-I): the screen's accessibility tree, as a tree or a flat list with levels, each element's details, and the problems found. Copy it as text, or save it as text or JSON.
• Speech Log (Control-Alt-L), Device Log (Control-Alt-J) and Shell (Control-Alt-T).
• Apps (Control-Alt-P), with permissions and special access, and Accessibility Services (Control-Alt-U).
• Snapshots (Control-Alt-S), and Battery, Location and Phone (Control-Alt-B). Places and addresses are looked up on OpenStreetMap, which gets only the text you typed.
• Android Versions (Control-Alt-A, in the File menu), with updates for the emulator and tools.
• Open Link (Control-Shift-L), Send Intent, and Watch for New Builds.
• Open in Own Window (Control-Alt-O): a device in a window of its own. While it's in front, the menu's shortcuts act on that device.

Each window stays open beside the main one: Tab moves through it, F5 refreshes it if it has a Refresh button, and Escape closes it.

Fixed: Tab got stuck in the set-up text and the last message, and the keyboard could do nothing after a button with the focus became unavailable.

Installing

• Windows: run AAE-0.3.0-windows-x64-setup.exe. It installs AAE for you alone, with no administrator prompt. It needs Windows 10 or 11 on an Intel or AMD processor, with Windows Hypervisor Platform turned on. AAE isn't signed for Windows yet, so SmartScreen may say it protected your PC: choose More info, then Run anyway. If you have a development build, Help, Check for Updates offers this release.
• Mac: download AAE-0.3.0.dmg, open it and drag AAE to Applications, or choose Check for Updates in the AAE menu. The first time, go to System Settings, Privacy & Security, and choose Open Anyway.

AAE 0.2.2

New

• Android 17, and Android 16's later update (API 36.1), are now offered. Google numbers them with a decimal point, such as 37.0 and 36.1, which AAE couldn't read, so they never appeared. Devices now show the exact release they run.
• Previews. New Device has Include Previews, to also offer previews of upcoming Android releases: the latest beta and Google's latest Canary build. It's remembered. aae available --previews lists them in the terminal. Google publishes previews, and Android 17's newest updates, only with 16 KB memory pages, for testing apps with them, and AAE says so beside them.

Fix

• Android 15 devices. Setting up a device with Android 15 stopped at "Setting up the full keyboard", with an error ending in "Killed". Android 15 hands back its list of input methods in a new form, which AAE's helper couldn't read. It can now, and Android 15 devices set up and work like the others. A device that failed before finishes setting up the next time you start it. If something goes wrong in AAE's helper from now on, its error says what failed.

If you have an earlier AAE, it offers this update itself. Otherwise, download AAE-0.2.2.dmg and copy AAE to Applications; the first time you open it, go to System Settings, Privacy & Security, and choose Open Anyway. For Macs with Apple silicon, on macOS 13 or later.