What does the dashboard Developer Mode toggle currently enable on retail LP3s?

[evandk]

I've built a tool with the SDK (verified working on the LightOS emulator — hermes-lightphone, a chat client for a self-hosted Hermes Agent) and I'm trying to understand the current on-device story.

I enabled Developer Mode on my dashboard, but it appears to be just a toggle: no upload flow appears in the dashboard, and my LP3 (current firmware + LightOS) doesn't expose ADB over USB after toggling and rebooting (USB still enumerates MTP + HID only).

Questions:

1. Is the dashboard Developer Mode toggle currently a no-op on retail devices, pending the File Manager / local-network install flow mentioned in the July update?
2. Is there any currently-supported way to run a locally-built tool on retail LP3 hardware, or is the emulator the only target until that update ships?
3. Any rough ETA for the install flow?

Happy to beta-test the install flow or the build/sign pipeline — the tool is open source, built strictly within the SDK scaffold (no manifest edits, allowlisted deps only), and ready for Tool Library submission whenever that opens.

[cmg-ops]

I asked similar questions here. This is the info I got https://github.com/orgs/lightphone/discussions/93.

[dupontgu]

1. It's not a no-op technically - it lets users with sideloaded apps see them in the toolbox.
2. The only way to do that currently is by flipping the setting in Developer settings to "All Tools" and then adb'ing your local tool in. Working fast to get that update in so you don't have to do that.
3. rough estimate: late august? Likely not in the upcoming LightOS release (following 568), but shooting for the one after that.

Gonna close this as a duplicate of #93 - let's move further conversation there.