Further keyboard/gamepad support

[holaimscott]

Is your feature request related to a problem?

Yes. I tested using Niagara Pro on my gaming handhelds, and surprisingly it works and looks great too in landscape mode. I have the launcher on my phone is such a breeze to use, but using it on an android device in landscape mode is truly efficient and easy to navigate.

And nice this launcher focuses on one-hand usage, toggling the A-Z bar and search gesture is so easy.

Currently the gamepad/keyboard input in the launcher seems to work close to perfect. The way is set now seems to be:

(Gamepad) A/ Start button= Accept B= Back X/Y/L1/R1= Toggle App List Select= Option menu

-Navigating the homescreen and app list is mostly good, and the UI is smooth.

And while most of the features work properly, sometimes the UI breaks a bit in some critical scenarios:

In the homescreen/app list:

• Navigating the music widget works fine, but when going down the favorites list, the navigation is odd; the widget gets skipped if you go down from the clock to the last favorite listing. Going upwards seems okay, but this might be due to the way the columns are assigned.
• When opening a pop-up folder, the d-pad/ navigation stick will not land on it and nit will still try to move across the other icons in the homepage/app list as opposed to the pop-up menu.
• When editing the homescreen/app list, there is no way to accept all the changes via physical input
• This issue also occurs when prompting a menu/options for an app icon

In the Launcher Settings menu:

• When accessing the settings menu, the top header blocks most of the space to navigate the settings.
• On the settings panel, sometimes the gamepad/keyboard input will fail. -And while the homescreen/app list is already optimized for landscape mode, the settings panel is not.

Describe the solution you'd like

It would mean a lot if in future updates the gamepad/keyboard input is better optimized. This would benefit almost every user, and in an interesting way, add much more versatility to this launcher for easier navigation.

My personal suggestion of solutions/additions:

• Optimize the way input behaves in the homescreen (specially when a widget is present)
• Optimize input when prompting any options pop-up or a folder.
• Optimize the Settings panel to work on Landscape mode, along with better input detection for gamepads/physical keyboards.
• (optional) Add a menu in the settings panel to customize shortcuts for gamepad keys. Currently some input keys already so some features, so it would be nice to add the option to control which ones we could use: Toggle App List, Toggle Options, Toggle Search Bar, Check app notification, etc.

While this might seem like a niche usage (since in my case it is for android gaming handhelds), this would benefit alot of people that rely on external controllers to navigate the android ecosystem (whether is due to a disability or unable to use touch input as much), and Niagara Launcher could be a new option for those looking to be more productive and make it easy to do daily tasks on their devices.

Feature Request Procedure

• [X] I have read the knowledge base article on feature requests and followed the steps mentioned

[SamSDK]

D-Pad Support For App selection for Flip Phone

I know this may be a niche problem, but I use niagara launcher on a flip phone and I'm always trying but I can't select an app using the D-pad on the phone. I use a SM-G1600 on Android 6.0.1 for reference. If possible I'd like to find a solution to this as I'd love to keep using Niagara on that phone.

I believe this should be a simple feature to add, by simply adding the function to support a D-pad for flip phones. This is purely a functionality request and should not affect the look of the application in any way.

[8bitPit]

Thanks for the detailed list of issues and fantastic setup :D Agreed, we should improve overall keyboard and gamepad support - although I cannot promise to fix all of them.

[bpavuk]

My proposal of possible way to control the A-Z bar: hold right stick and move it up/down to move up/down in A-Z menu

[TFackler]

Jonathan (via mail support) reported an issue with controller navigation:

Be on the home screen with Clock and date visible, no weather or agenda Have nothing selected Move downwards using the d-pad - Clock is selected Move downwards using the d-pad - first entry in the favorites list is selected Move up using the d-pad - date is selected

This means that moving down the date entry is skipped, while when moving up, it is selected as intended.

We might address this while adding further controller support.