NectarLink 0.1.4 Pollen

Steadier connections, Pause for banking apps, Simplified Chinese on Android, and the fixes for what people ran into in the first days after launch.

Downloads

Download	For	Needs
Nectarlink-0.1.4-x64-setup.exe	Windows	Windows 11, 64-bit (Windows 10 works, without Phone as webcam)
Nectarlink-0.1.4-android.apk	Android	Android 8.0 or newer

Both are listed with their SHA-256 hashes in SHA256SUMS.txt. Installed copies update themselves.

New

• Pause for banking apps. Many banking apps won't open while Developer options, debugging or an accessibility service is on. Choose them in Settings › Control from your PC: while one is open, NectarLink turns those off, and turns back on exactly what was on when you leave, even after a crash or a restart. A shortcut can pause first for apps that check as they open.
• Simplified Chinese for the Android app, by @zzz1465720680 (#13). It follows the phone's language.
• Turn the phone's screen off from an app window, as screen mirroring could: the phone stays awake with its screen dark, and the apps keep running on the PC. Keep phone awake works there too.
• Root as a way to set up Elevated. On a rooted phone (Magisk, KernelSU or APatch), Use root in Elevated setup starts it without pairing Wireless debugging, and it comes back by itself after a restart or away from Wi-Fi. It runs with the same permissions as through Wireless debugging.
• Installing past Google Play Protect. The install guide and troubleshooting explain what to do when Play Protect blocks the APK with no Install anyway button, as it now does in India and many other countries, by @eren-998 (#11). The README points there from the downloads.

Changed

• Root is only used when you choose it. On a rooted phone, NectarLink asked for root every time it started and ran its Elevated helper as root. Now nothing asks for root unless you pick Use root, and the helper runs as the shell user either way.
• The apps say "PC" instead of "Windows PC".

Fixed

• Far fewer disconnects. As the phone app opened, two of its startup calls could race and start the phone's connection twice, with one identity. The two took the PC from each other every few seconds: windows and mirroring dropped or couldn't start, and the PC showed the phone connecting over and over. It now starts once.
• Windows 10. NectarLink and its installer start on Windows 10. They failed right away with "Entry Point Not Found" because the Windows 11-only virtual camera was required at startup. On Windows 10, everything works except Phone as webcam, which needs Windows 11.
• Phone sound never falls back to the microphone. On a phone that blocks capturing what it plays, Elevated recorded the microphone instead and sent it to the PC as the phone's sound. It now sends no sound.
• Mirroring with Elevated starts without asking on the phone. Starting it failed on the phone (it opened the helper's stream on the main thread, which Android refuses), so it fell back to asking you to share the screen.
• Screen mirroring and app windows use the GPU. They decode on the PC's GPU when it has one, and in software when it doesn't or if the GPU fails mid-stream, and convert pictures on several cores. Large phone screens and several app windows stay smooth with less CPU.
• App windows and mirroring stay up.
  • With an app open in a window on the PC, the phone went to sleep after its screen timeout, which stopped the app and froze the window. While a window is open, the phone now stays awake with its screen dimmed, and sleeps as usual once the last window closes.
  • While it streams, the phone keeps its Wi-Fi and processor awake, so it stays on the network with its screen off.
  • If the connection to the PC dropped or was replaced just as you opened an app window or the phone's screen, the phone gave up at once with "Offline". It now waits up to 10 seconds for the connection to come back.
• Phone as webcam in 4K is smooth. The PC decoded and converted each 4K frame in about 47 ms, over the 33 ms a frame has at 30 fps, so frames were dropped. It now decodes on the GPU when there is one and converts on several cores, about 19 ms a frame (#6).
• Webcam resolution. The resolution buttons on the PC and the phone follow what's actually streaming, whichever side changed it; held upright, the phone's showed none selected. 4K is offered only when the camera in use can output it, so switching to a front camera without 4K drops to 1080p.
• Typing and pasting into the phone's screen and app windows.
  • The emoji panel (Win+.) and input methods for Chinese and other languages work while you control the phone. Only plain key presses got through before.
  • Win+V pastes. Windows marks an item picked from clipboard history as one for clipboard watchers to skip, and NectarLink skipped it even when you asked to paste it.
  • Pasting is instant instead of typing out a letter at a time, and a pasted line break no longer presses Enter, which sent chat messages early.
• Typing on the PC from the phone works like a normal keyboard. In Control PC, Backspace deletes, the symbols page stays open for more than one symbol, autocorrect and suggestions work, and letters no longer come out jumbled.
• No "copied" pop-up on the phone for copies made on the PC. With Elevated on, text from the PC goes on the phone's clipboard without the copy toast or preview Android and One UI show for every copy. Without Elevated, Android doesn't let an app avoid it.
• Calls show who is calling. An answered call lost the contact name on the PC, and calls made on the phone showed "Unknown caller". The name now stays for the whole call, the number comes from Android's call service when its broadcast has none, and a number not in contacts shows as the number.
• Old calls and notifications no longer come back after the PC sleeps or restarts. A call whose end the phone never recorded rang again on every reconnect; it now counts as over after 90 seconds of ringing. Notifications you clear on the PC stay cleared when the phone resends its list (on reconnect or Refresh), even when the phone can't remove them, as with missed calls and alarms. A new post from the same app shows as usual.
• Android: the app no longer crashes when you turn off notification access or force stop it, or when Phone as webcam's preview comes back (the same fix covers the QR scanner and Continuity Camera).
• Android: changing the theme in Settings no longer jumps back to Home (#8).
• Android: on Hive, the category chips at the top of Settings and the Home/Settings bar are solid, so the honeycomb and the list no longer show through them.
• Windows: button tooltips, such as Pause on the media card, show next to their button again instead of in the window's top-left corner.
• Pausing a transfer on the receiving device just as its last bytes arrived left the sending device waiting, showing it as still sending. Both now show it paused.

Thanks

To @zzz1465720680 for the Simplified Chinese translation and the reports in #6 and #8, @eren-998 for the Play Protect guide, @jochenkirstaetter for testing on a Pixel and the Linux port in progress, and everyone who reported problems on GitHub and X.