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.